Rain-filled, roach-ridden Australian crime-thriller, a first novel showing great energy, dynamic storytelling, a winning fondness for the genre—and some first-rate tough talk. Dale slaps all of his reading and moviegoing into one pastiche, borrowing elements of Raymond Chandler's vision of L.A. in his descriptions of a seedy modern-day Sydney, mixing in some bloody, bone-crunching violence Ö la Jim Thompson, adding a case of incest reminiscent of the plot of Polanski's Chinatown, and a climax in which the hero winds up wounded and facing the feds in High Sierra shootout country—with a Casablanca kissoff. And it all works brilliantly. Jack Buturov, a bouncer at a Sydney casino, lifts $1,500 from the cashbox. When he rescues Damian Frick, a handsome young gay hustler, from a deadly beating, Damian repays him with sex and an offer to pull a job that will protect Jack from the consequences of his casino theft, help pay off his ex-wife Vicky, and buy an operation for his chronically ill son. Then Damian is murdered, both eyes shot out in broad daylight by Chinese Triad killers. When vengeance-driven Angela Frick, Damian's unmarried sister and the dark angel of the title, ropes Jack into helping her find her brother's killers, Sydney turns into a theme park of mayhem and beatings. Jack remains solidly immoral, ambisexual and a cheat, fixed absolutely on money—though sex does sometimes get his attention. Coursing like a force of nature, Angela, with her all-consuming lust for revenge, drives the novel's wheels until she's larger than life and utterly compelling. Her almost inhuman motivation remains unfathomable until the very end when she reveals that her six-year-old daughter Clea is the child of . . . well, let's draw a veil. Intense entertainment.
Pub Date: July 1, 1996
ISBN: 1-85242-391-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Eskens’ debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous...
A struggling student’s English assignment turns into a mission to solve a 30-year-old murder.
Joe Talbert has had very few breaks in his 21 years. The son of a single and very alcoholic mother, he’s worked hard to save enough money to leave his home in Austin, Minnesota, for the University of Minnesota. Although he has to leave his autistic younger brother, Jeremy Naylor, to the dubious care of their mother, Joe is determined to beat the odds and get his degree. For an assignment in his English class, he decides to interview Carl Iverson, a man convicted of raping and killing a 14-year-old girl. Carl, who maintains his innocence, is dying of cancer and has been released to a nursing home to end his life in lonely but unrepentant pain. The more Joe learns about Carl—a Vietnam vet with two Purple Hearts and a Silver Cross—the more the young man questions the conviction. Joe’s plan to write a short biography and earn an easy A turns into something more. Even after his mother is arrested for drunk driving and guilt-trips Joe into ransacking his college fund to bail her out, he soldiers on with the project, though her irresponsibility forces him to take Jeremy into his care. But it’s his younger brother who cracks the code of the long-dead murder victim’s secret diary and an attractive neighbor, Lila Nash, who has her own agenda for helping Joe solve the mystery, whatever the risk.
Eskens’ debut is a solid and thoughtful tale of a young man used to taking on burdens beyond his years—none more dangerous than championing a bitter old man convicted of a horrific crime.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61614-998-7
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Seventh Street Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
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