A swiftly paced procedural that introduces a formidable detective.
A retired, widowed Drug Enforcement Administration agent looking to start a new life finds himself the prime suspect in a string of murders plaguing a college town.
The arrival of Joe Nicoletti in Missoula, Montana, coincides with the discovery of a missing woman’s body, and that’s just the first in a series of unfortunate (but plausible) coincidences that set this breakneck contemporary procedural in motion. Nicoletti arrives in Missoula as a candidate to inaugurate a new criminology program at the University of Montana. There, he meets a newly divorced professor, Marie-Justine Junot, who bears an uncanny resemblance to his late wife (“Her high cheekbones and dark eyes stirred a memory inside Nicoletti”). He is given a less than warm greeting by the local police chief, who questions the connection between Nicoletti’s arrival in town and the discovery of the dead woman, whose disappearance months before coincided with Nicoletti’s guest lecture stint at a university conference. “Just an interesting coincidence,” the chief cryptically remarks. Meanwhile, the actual killer, dog groomer Charles Durbin, methodically stalks his next victims. Giliotti (Gambrelli and the Prosecutor, 2015) quickly reveals the predator’s identity, building suspense in short, punchy chapters that advance the story through interweaved concurrent scenes that unfold from different perspectives. In one chapter, Marie-Justine’s suspicious elderly neighbor confronts Nicoletti on the street. In the next, Giliotti rewinds as an unwitting Marie-Justine observes the encounter outside her patio door (“She was curious whom Mrs. Jaeger was accosting”). This gives the story an inexorable, page-turning momentum that carries the reader through to the climactic confrontation. Nicoletti is not a flashy character, but he is an impressive detective with the capture of two serial killers to his credit (“which…puts you in an exclusive club having only one member,” he is praised). Durbin is a suitably creepy villain with a penchant for breaking into his victims’ homes while they are out and rummaging through their personal belongings. So it’s probably best that most of the murders, including one unnerving Psycho-like shocker, occur “offstage,” leaving the grisly details to the reader’s imagination.
A swiftly paced procedural that introduces a formidable detective.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9909266-2-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Chateau Noir Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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