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
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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