Excellent writing and a clever plot make this one stand out.
Irish author Banville brings back characters he originally wrote about under the name Benjamin Black.
Banville’s latest 1950s-set crime novel opens with Denton Wymes, a recluse who lives in a caravan in rural Ireland with his dog, stumbling upon an unusual sight: a Mercedes SL idling in a field, its headlamps on and no driver in sight. A man named Armitage accosts Wymes, saying that his wife, who had been driving the car, has gone missing and may have “drowned herself.” Wymes is suspicious of Armitage, whose affect seems off: “It seemed a piece of bad acting, but then, Wymes told himself, that’s mostly how people behave when there’s a crisis and they’re distraught.” DI St John Strafford arrives from Dublin to investigate, quickly sussing out that nothing about the case will be straightforward—Armitage is slippery and unpredictable, Wymes is a convicted child molester, and something seems amiss about the couple whose rental house Armitage and Wymes went to for help. Meanwhile, Strafford has his own problems: His separated wife wants a divorce, and his lover—who happens to be the daughter of his pathologist colleague, Quirke—is pregnant. And when two bodies are discovered, he is faced with an increasing sense of urgency. Strafford and Quirke return as characters from Banville’s previous crime novels, and Armitage played a large role in his most recent book, The Lock-Up (2023). These are compelling people: Strafford with his emotional unavailability (“The fact was, he did not understand himself, or Phoebe, or anyone. The vagaries of the human heart baffled him”) and Quirke with his brooding depression (“He stayed away from people as much as possible. This was a loneliness company couldn’t cure”). As for the mystery at the heart of the book: Banville remains a master of suspense; it’s not easy to stop turning the pages until the novel’s genuinely surprising end. This is yet another fine thriller from an author at the top of his game.
Excellent writing and a clever plot make this one stand out.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781335000590
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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