With raw eloquence, Harper finds his characters’ humanity in the context of a mostly pitiless world
Young gang members find their sense of identity within a criminal family.
Familiarity with She Rides Shotgun (2017), Harper’s Edgar Award–winning debut about gang warfare in California’s Inland Empire, is not necessary to follow this sequel. What is necessary is a strong stomach for graphic violence and toxic masculinity summed up by the Combine family’s mantra, “Blood is love.” Initiation into the family involves receiving a heart tattoo that combines ink with the blood of a murdered Combine member. At age 7, Luke Crosswhite witnessed his father, Bobby, the leader of the Combine, kick a man to death in a bowling alley parking lot. Bobby went to prison (where he remains), and Luke was sent to Colorado to live with his long-absent mother’s law-abiding relatives. His uncle Del is running the Combine for Bobby—think theft and drug-dealing with occasional gang warfare thrown in—when 19-year-old Luke returns as the unlikely heir apparent, a college dropout still struggling with debilitating flashbacks to his father's crime. Luke finds himself torn. His basic decency and sensitivity are challenged by the adrenaline rush that acts of extreme machismo offer. Affection for a lovable pit bull named Manson (the novel’s only joke) plays a central role in the battle within his soul, but the pull of being part of a family, however defective, is hard for the lonely outsider to resist. In contrast, Luke’s childhood playmate Callie, now a small-time drug dealer, has always been part of the family's operations. She yearns to escape with her drugged-out, sweet-natured boyfriend to a life she imagines outside the gang. As Luke and Callie make fateful decisions, the larger, scarier gang Aryan Steel threatens the Combine’s autonomy while California wildfires rage beyond human control. A novel in which needless deaths pile up somehow manages to be heartbreaking yet oddly hopeful, even a tad sentimental.
With raw eloquence, Harper finds his characters’ humanity in the context of a mostly pitiless worldPub Date: Nov. 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780316581400
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
A pulpy throwback that shines a light on abuses even magic can’t erase.
Hung out to dry by the elders who betrayed them, a squad of pregnant teens fights back with old magic.
Hendrix has a flair for applying inventive hooks to horror, and this book has a good one, chock-full with shades of V.C. Andrews, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Foxfire, to name a few. Our narrator, Neva Craven, is 15 and pregnant, a fate worse than death in the American South circa 1970. She’s taken by force to Wellwood House in Florida, a secretive home for unwed mothers where she’s given the name Fern. She’ll have the baby secretly and give it up for adoption, whether she likes it or not. Under the thumb of the house’s cruel mistress, Miss Wellwood, and complicit Dr. Vincent, Neva forges cautious alliance with her fellow captives—a new friend, Zinnia; budding revolutionary Rose; and young Holly, raped and impregnated by the very family minister slated to adopt her child. All seems lost until the arrival of a mysterious bookmobile and its librarian, Miss Parcae, who gives the girls an actual book of spells titled How To Be a Groovy Witch. There’s glee in seeing the powerless granted some well-deserved payback, but Hendrix never forgets his sweet spot, lacing the story with body horror and unspeakable cruelties that threaten to overwhelm every little victory. In truth, it’s not the paranormal elements that make this blast from the past so terrifying—although one character evolves into a suitably scary antagonist near the end—but the unspeakable, everyday atrocities leveled at children like these. As the girls lose their babies one by one, they soon devote themselves to secreting away Holly and her child. They get some help late in the game but for the most part they’re on their own, trapped between forces of darkness and society’s merciless judgement.
A pulpy throwback that shines a light on abuses even magic can’t erase.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9780593548981
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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