Sam and her boyfriend, former policeman Reece, are now engaged and living in Toronto, but he finds himself at loose ends in...
Private eye Sam McNamara is back for a third adventure in Fraser’s (Skully: Perdition Games, 2015, etc.) new thriller, investigating a crime that hits close to home and forces her to suspect her own friends.
Sam and her boyfriend, former policeman Reece, are now engaged and living in Toronto, but he finds himself at loose ends in the city. He misses the rural life and feels out of place among Sam’s friends, with the exception of one: Abby, a ballet dancer whose girlfriend, Talia, is overseas with the Canadian Armed Forces. But after Abby is found dead after slitting her wrists in a bathtub—and also found to be four months pregnant—some of Sam’s friends suspect Reece is the father, as he was one of the men she knew best. Meanwhile, Sam’s psychiatrist friend, Roger, is embroiled in an affair with former patient Brenda; her husband, Graham, is brutally murdered on the same day that Roger is visiting her. As Sam and Reece investigate Graham’s death, they’re not sure whether to suspect Roger, who seems to be hiding something; one of Brenda and Graham’s teenage children, whose stories don’t add up; or Graham’s ex-wife, who spent several years in prison for murdering her own mother. Sam and Reece must try to untangle the truth from the lies even as Sam’s friends remain hostile toward Reece. Overall, Fraser crafts a strong mystery that sweeps readers along with the two well-developed main characters. Sam’s and Reece’s personal issues and friendships are just as compelling as the question of who committed Graham’s murder. Every twist, turn, and moment of misdirection will keep readers guessing, but these elements never feel overly telegraphed or intentionally misleading. The story also moves along at a brisk pace and ends on a dark yet satisfying note that will leave readers eager to find out what happens next in the series.Pub Date: June 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9947742-3-1
Page Count: 428
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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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