Eccentricity at its finest in a detective story and proof that a flawed protagonist can still earn sympathy.
A publicist for a crime tour drums up business by hiring a mercy killer, but his murderous employee may be choosing his own victims in this thriller.
Former investigative journalist Brinker hasn’t found much work since losing his newspaper job, having accused his boss of bribing cops over a reputed DUI. His newest gig entails public relations for Pennsylvania funeral home owner and local coroner Frank Mabry’s Seen of the Crime, a tour of murder sites. A lack of sensational murders has kept business down, but Brinker’s doctor, Timothy Jolley, has an idea: spruce up the tour by paying someone to kill terminal patients. The doctor will bankroll it, and Brinker can clear his debt, courtesy of a lawsuit relating to that DUI allegation. Seen of the Crime sees more tourists, but Brinker soon will have to stop a commissioned serial killer who may no longer be using Jolley’s victim list. The novel is a detective story with a darkly humorous twist; Brinker’s unquestionably responsible for the killing spree, but most of it is as much a mystery to him as it is to readers. He, for one, hires the murderer (dubbed Angel, for Angel of Death) through pal Stanislaw Niemoczynski and doesn’t know Angel’s true identity. There’s likewise a sinister pattern to the later, seemingly random murders, something that Brinker will have to unravel. He’s essentially the detective, and he’s a tad shadier than the shadiest of cinematic gumshoes. Not only does he know about the murders beforehand, Brinker also repeatedly beds various women with emotional detachment and prints and intends to sell I SHOT THE SHERIFF T-shirts, corresponding to a recent victim. Despite this, the protagonist remains likable, particularly because his firing from the newspaper was unjust and he cares for his ailing grandmother. And he’s still the hero, in a prime position to thwart the murders, even if it means becoming the unhinged killer’s next target. The story is somber but self-assured, like a film noir with a stylized, shadowy atmosphere. Widmer (Riding with the Blues, 2015, etc.) rounds out Brinker by outfitting him with snazzy dialogue: Mabry rejects upping revenue with crime re-enactments, noting that the tour’s “authentic,” to which Brinker coolly responds, “So is bankruptcy.”
Eccentricity at its finest in a detective story and proof that a flawed protagonist can still earn sympathy.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9964987-4-6
Page Count: 282
Publisher: Allusion Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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