An engaging mystery that offers plenty of potential for a planned series.
IRS agent Mark Douglas will stop at nothing to find his boss’s killer in this debut novel.
This book’s subtitle is Tales of a Badass IRS Agent; usually, in popular culture, “badass” and “IRS” are mutually exclusive terms. The agency’s functionaries are generally portrayed as milquetoast, like Will Ferrell in the 2006 film Stranger than Fiction. Here, Mark Douglas refers to himself as a “glorified accountant,” but he’s also an ex-Marine who leads his “bang-squad,” “the United States government’s own repo men,” on raids to seize tax-cheats’ money or possessions in order to square them with Uncle Sam. One such raid opens the story, as the squad—including 30-year veteran Harry Salt, newbie Miguel, and “weird” Wooly Bob—recovers $15,500 hidden in a Colt 45 can. The group’s camaraderie is further illustrated in the next scene—a barroom brawl with a man they call the “Human Fire Hydrant” and five of his friends after he gets too handsy with the squad’s favorite waitress. These scenes are played for laughs, but as Douglas’ boss, Lila Everston, notes, “You boys love playing cowboys and tax evaders. But someone’s gonna get hurt one of these days.” Tragically, that someone is Lila, whom Douglas considers to be “the big sister I should have had.” He teams up with an FBI wonk with the nickname “Tightass” to avenge her death. Zaslove, an award-winning writer of children’s TV programming (including The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, for which he earned a Humanitas Prize), delivers a series launcher that’s decidedly and bracingly not for kids. There are several groanworthy punchlines, which can be taxing (“At least it wasn’t a six-foot, seven-inch albino Texan singing the aria from Mozart’s Don Giovanni and accompanying himself on a Peruvian goat’s-hoof rattle”). But for the most part, this inaugural case is pleasingly complex. Lila’s demise comes early, so she doesn’t make a very strong impression, but readers will still feel Douglas’ loss. While processing his anger, the protagonist recalls when he stood up to his abusive stepfather in what may be the book’s most effective section.
An engaging mystery that offers plenty of potential for a planned series.Pub Date: April 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9712374-8-3
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Aperient Press
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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