In 1934, a French police inspector tries to prove that an arrogant prosecutor wasn’t responsible for the murder of his young mistress.
The spirit of Georges Simenon is alive and well in this novel. Chief Inspector Arthur Gambrelli of the Metropolitan Police is sent from the city to the island of Q, where the murder of a young woman named Annette Cuomo has taken place. The obvious suspect is her lover, an arrogant senior prosecutor at the Justice Ministry, Jean Michel Bertrand, with whom Gambrelli has a combative relationship. Despite this, the detective doesn’t want to see the man railroaded, and he embarks on his own investigation. As he travels back and forth between the island and the city, Gambrelli’s list of suspects widens to include Bertrand’s wife, Adele, who knew that she was about to be thrown over for the younger woman; the victim’s sister, Lisa Cuomo, who goes missing and becomes the subject of an intense police manhunt; a drug smuggler who operates out of a fruit warehouse; and an array of other tough guys. Complicating the investigation is Gambrelli’s superior, Chief Superintendent Wilhelm, who tries to make his life a bureaucratic hell and is not above taking credit where it isn’t due. Although there’s nothing new in this murder mystery, the author nevertheless manages to make it a compelling story, mainly through the vivid cast of characters he assembles. Gambrelli is a wonderful personality, a civilized man doing an uncivilized job as best he can. His interactions with other characters are highly charged, especially with those who are less than forthcoming about their roles in the murder. The mystery itself is cleverly worked out, although there isn’t a lot of urgency in solving it. And rather unnecessarily, occasional newspaper clippings about the rise of fascism in Europe provide a context that is paradoxically missing from the story itself.
Gambrelli and his crew are such a delight that readers will hope the author is diligently at work on a sequel.
Pub Date: March 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-0990926603
Page Count: 326
Publisher: Chateau Noir Publishing, LLC
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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