Charismatic characters breathe life into these engaging crime stories.
In Hess’ collection of short stories, folks dabble in assorted unlawful acts for a variety of reasons.
In the title story, 15-year-old Jimmy relishes speeding down the highway in his uncle Billy’s Jaguar. Billy gives the boy access to things he can’t otherwise get, like beer. But when the uncle’s transgressions (namely what’s in the Jag’s trunk) put the boy in danger, Jimmy realizes he may need to find someone else to look up to. This collection’s 19 stories primarily take place in Florida across various eras, including the modern day, the 1980s, and the period of the Korean War. The tales feature a host of characters committing crimes, from participating in a prison riot (which becomes an inmate’s chance for escape) to a thuggish man’s revenge on the woman he believes cheated on him. “Barrow Girls” finds sisters Josie and Rachel planning an abduction, though their shared motive isn’t as venomous as readers may anticipate. Indeed, a handful of characters throughout the book become entangled in criminal endeavors through dumb luck. That’s certainly the case for Rand in “Young Sweedy”; he’s a hitchhiker who goes from passenger to getaway driver for the person who picks him up. (While he willingly turns outlaw, he questions his choice once cops are in pursuit.) On occasion, crime enters the narratives in unexpected ways: “Calvin’s Storm” zeroes in on an intellectually disabled man who searches for his sister’s cat outside despite a lightning-heavy rainstorm. His sister and caretaker, desperate to track him down before he’s hurt, makes an unusual decision to get the help she needs.
Hess’ largely appealing cast brightens many of these stories of malfeasance featuring threats, violence, and even murder. “Stealing Sunshine” introduces Natalia, a career thief whom a reputed bounty hunter sniffs out; she opens the tale in the guise of Sunshine the Clown, shod in floppy shoes and donning a pink wig. In the novella-length “Brahman Manor Breakdown,” con artists Sam and Rachel are akin to regular working Joes as they yearn for a vacation after eight months of nonstop hustling. Scotland Ross, who headlines his own series of books written by the author, pops up in more than one story, including the wonderfully noirish “Kyla’s Condition.” In this yarn, Scotland, on the day of his prison release, joins his safecracking pal Tommy in knocking off a casino located shockingly close to the penitentiary. The author’s taut, unadorned prose energizes the stories with swift action, rapid-fire dialogue, and an unwavering pace: “I finger the Zippo faster and faster in my pocket. I flip it open, flick the wheel. Feel the heat. The guy with the gun steals a peek over his shoulder toward the island and then levels the gun back on me.” Several of the stories clock in at only a few pages, but that’s plenty of space for Hess to deliver keen insights into his remarkable cast.
Charismatic characters breathe life into these engaging crime stories.Pub Date: March 25, 2024
ISBN: 9781643963600
Page Count: 294
Publisher: Down & Out Books
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
An action-packed, brightly detailed historical novel not much hampered by its thinly characterized central figure.
A free-spirited woman forges a career as a writer and journalist, risking scandal and war zones to follow her heart.
Allende’s latest opens in San Francisco in 1873, introducing Emilia at age 7, the illegitimate daughter of Molly Walsh, who, as a novice nun, was seduced and abandoned by wealthy Chilean Gonzalo Andrés del Valle. Molly goes on to a successful marriage, Emilia grows up with a loving stepfather, and at 17 she begins writing, then publishing, sensational dime novels under the pseudonym Brandon J. Price. By 23, she’s a journalist with a column in The Daily Examiner, though still forced to hide her gender behind her pen name. Rule breaking is in her nature, and while she accepts, for now, lower pay than men, she decides on a trip to New York to take a lover and learns to control her own contraception. Later, finally writing under her own name, she’s commissioned to go to Chile and cover its civil war from a human angle, accompanied by colleague and friend Eric Whelan, whose focus is the military aspect. Chilean revolutionary politics make for less sprightly reading, but Emilia’s individual encounters with members of high and low society lend atmosphere. These include the president, a great aunt, and eventually her father—now alone, regretful, and mortally ill. Although he disapproves of working women, the two share a “desire to see the world and experience everything intensely,” and when he offers to recognize Emilia as his legitimate child, she accepts. Now the story gathers pace, with Emilia—always and predictably the rebel—witnessing the horrors of battle, discovering that she and Eric are in love, and getting arrested. Not quite plausibly, she instigates a further sequence of impulsive moves before the story is permitted to conclude.
An action-packed, brightly detailed historical novel not much hampered by its thinly characterized central figure.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593975091
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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