A complex tale with an upbeat detective who valiantly confronts a bevy of villains.
Canfield’s (Dark Sky, 2015, etc.) latest thriller finds New York City private investigator Max Bowman searching for an elusive comic book artist, only to wind up entangled in a conspiracy.
When Max took down the secret military operation Dark Sky last year, it made him a media darling, and he now has a book about his experience in the works. He also has his next gig lined up: comic book publisher “Mighty Mel” Chesler wants him to track down writer/artist Ben Mikov, whose whereabouts have been unknown for decades. Mikov abandoned the industry just before his 12-issue Blue Fire series ended, and the fan-abhorred issue #12 was completed without him; despite this, the series eventually earned cult status. Mel needs Mikov to sign off on a Blue Fire film adaptation, but finding him isn’t easy. Even Max’s CIA frenemy, Howard Klein, turns up nothing. Before Max quits, though, he has drinks with Mel’s grandnieces, Candy and Janine, who plead with him to stay on the case. At the restaurant, the PI is suddenly woozy, apparently drugged, and his ensuing bad trip, recorded by witnesses, later goes viral. This, coupled with the unexplained disappearance of Sen. Abe Marks, Max’s ally during “the Dark Sky thing,” makes him surmise that he’s experiencing blowback from that operation. Someone’s trying to discredit him, he thinks, and this is seemingly verified when he’s dosed again, abducted, and tortured. In this second appearance, Canfield makes Max almost playfully buoyant, which contrasts nicely with the dense, though never confusing, plot. The cynical Max remains optimistic, even when his situation’s dire; despite the fact that numerous people are clearly against him, he still plans on keeping his “dental appointment next Tuesday.” Max’s volatile relationship with his estranged girlfriend, Jules, is efficacious when he has nowhere else to turn to for help. But the best interactions are between Max and Eydie, his new rescue dog, whom he reluctantly grows to love. Mikov’s location does play a part in the story, but the real mystery lies in who the baddies are and how deep their machinations run. Hefty twists abound, including a couple that Canfield saves for the final 10 pages.
A complex tale with an upbeat detective who valiantly confronts a bevy of villains.Pub Date: May 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9975707-0-0
Page Count: 398
Publisher: joined at the hip
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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