Hot on the heels of Mary Willis Walker's Under the Beetle's Cellar (p. 818), another post-Waco hostage crisis, this one a stunner from the author of Praying for Sleep (1994) and ten other suspense novels. The hostages this time are eight deaf Kansas schoolgirls and their two teachers, held in an abandoned slaughterhouse by murderous escaped convict Lou Handy and his two sadistic sidekicks. Premier FBI negotiator Arthur Potter expects this showdown to be relatively routineafter all, Handy and his pals aren't terrorists out to make a point, just felons trying to make their getawayso he figures he can string the negotiations out and wear out the bad guys. But as soon as the police rig up Handy with a cellular phone, he threatens to kill one hostage an hour until he gets transport and more weapons, and he starts out right away to show he's not kidding. Meanwhile, Potter's supposed allies from the local scene are busy undermining him: The governor has authorized a rogue operation to storm the slaughterhouse; a maverick assistant attorney general has ideas about swapping himself for the hostages; and the Fourth Estate, unaware that Handy's watching himself on TV, is plotting to get some close-up footage of the big event. The only hope, it seems, is with patient, uncompromising Potter, together with Kansas cop Charlie Budd; timid hostage Melanie Charrol, an apprentice teacher; and Sharon Foster, a state detective who talked Handy out of an earlier confrontation. But just when it seems that the situation's finally under control, Deaver ignites some diabolical new fireworks that will leave you agog. If this climax strains too hard for Hannibal Lecter supervillainy, most readers will be too busy losing their sleep over Deaver's outsized thriller and casting its other rolesMarlee Matlin looks like a shoo-in for Melanieto care. (First printing of 200,000; $200,000 ad/promo; Literary Guild featured alternate; author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-670-86622-9
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995
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
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
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