A detective story whose imperfect protagonist boasts endearing qualities just below his rakish exterior.
A former CIA agent tries to prove a dead war hero isn’t actually dead and runs afoul of a private security company that may want to silence him in this thriller.
Max Bowman hasn’t worked for the CIA in years, but his old employers still throw the occasional job his way. The latest is Gen. Donald Davidson, who hires Max to find his son, 1st Lt. Robert Davidson. News outlets from a decade ago reported that Robert died in Afghanistan, but an unnamed source has told the general that his son’s alive. Max is inclined to agree, especially after Robert’s sister, Angela, apparently desperate that Max not take the case, sends teenage son Jeremy to scare him off. And Max is surely making someone else nervous: before he can question a retired colonel, an SUV smashes into Max’s rental car and the colonel’s house explodes. Robert, it seems, had an association with a private military organization called Dark Sky. One of the company’s operatives, taking on actor Chuck Connors’ persona in The Rifleman, is gunning for Max, as well as anyone who may have pertinent information relating to Robert. Max teams up with Jeremy, who wants to help his grandfather, and they head to a Dark Sky training facility in Montana, hoping to find answers—if they can survive long enough. The decidedly unlikable protagonist will grow on readers. He’s undeniably gruff; his first-person narrative remains relentlessly sarcastic and insists on detailing bathroom excursions. Max’s bluntness, however, makes him the story’s most honest character—and most reliable, since he’s surrounded by people either lying or hiding something. His unsentimental relationship with girlfriend Jules, too, is more believable than most: their repeated phone conversations consist of Jules’ loud curses in lieu of sweet nothings. There’s not much mystery but definitely suspense, with the Rifleman-lookalike putting Max, Jeremy, and maybe a few others in unmistakable peril. Canfield (co-author of What’s Driving You???, 2015) likewise supplements his genre piece with a profound theme of fatherhood. Max and Jeremy take a detour to see the teen’s estranged dad, while the candid narrator ultimately reveals why his two daughters hate him.
A detective story whose imperfect protagonist boasts endearing qualities just below his rakish exterior.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9975707-1-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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