As dexterously shape-shifting as the legends it draws from.
Following her memorably creepy debut, Little Darlings (2019), Golding scaffolds an unsettling series of revelations on the folktale “The Mermaid Wife.”
As if eager to please Sgt. Friday, Golding begins with just the facts. Leonie Douglas is a toddler suddenly separated from her mother in a shop in the seaside town of Cleethorpes. Ruby Harper, violinist and teacher, shows up and claims Leonie as her daughter; she happens to be wearing the same outfit as Constance Douglas, the girl's actual mother. Diane Rathbone, the Social Services worker called to the scene by the fast-arriving police, questions Ruby briefly before letting her go, convinced that she couldn’t possibly harm the little girl she says is hers. Meanwhile, in response to a call from Sarah Stefanidis, who’s noticed a telltale drip from her ceiling, DS Joanna Harper and PC Steve Atkinson break into the silent flat above hers and find her neighbor Gregor Franks in his bathtub, filled with drugs, bleeding from a head wound, and close to death. A series of flashbacks show Ruby’s slow entanglement with Gregor and her baffled encounters with Constance, whom he describes as his housemate and ex-lover and who describes herself as a prisoner who longs to rejoin her people, the mythological selkies. Assigned to investigate the assault on Gregor, Joanna, who’s already demonstrated her cavalier attitude toward the rules, finds herself irresistibly drawn into an unauthorized search for Leonie and Ruby—and willing to tell just as many lies as Ruby about what she’s up to and why. Long before the end, readers will be questioning all their assumptions about who are the victims, who are the criminals, and exactly which facts really are the facts.
As dexterously shape-shifting as the legends it draws from.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64385-297-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crooked Lane
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Red-hot storytelling.
Two master storytellers create one explosive thriller.
Mauna Loa is going to blow within days—“the biggest damn eruption in a century”—and John “Mac” MacGregor of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory leads a team trying to fend off catastrophe. Can they vent the volcano? Divert the flow of blistering hot lava? The city of Hilo is but a few miles down the hill from the world’s largest active volcano and will likely be in the path of a 15-foot-high wall of molten menace racing toward them at 50 miles an hour. “You live here, you always worry about the big one,” Mac says, and this could be it. There’s much more, though. The U.S. Army swoops in, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff personally “drafts” Mac into the Army. Then Mac learns the frightening secret of the Army’s special interest in Mauna Loa, and suddenly the stakes fly far, far beyond Hilo. Perhaps they can save the world, but the odds don’t look good. Readers will sympathize with Mac, who teaches surfing to troubled teens and for whom “taking chances is part of his damned genetic code.” But no one takes chances like the aerial cowboy Jake Rogers and the photographer who hires him to fly over the smoldering, burbling, rock-spitting hellhole. Some of the action scenes will make readers’ eyes pop as the tension continues to build. As with any good thriller, there’s a body count, but not all thrillers have blackened corpses surfing lava flows. The story is the brainchild of the late Crichton, who did a great deal of research but died in 2008 before he could finish the novel. His widow handed the project to James Patterson, who weaves Crichton’s work into a seamless summer read.
Red-hot storytelling.Pub Date: June 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780316565073
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
Fine Grisham storytelling that his fans will enjoy.
A descendant of enslaved people fights a Florida developer over the future of a small island.
In 1760, the slave ship Venus breaks apart in a storm on its way to Savannah, and only a few survivors, all Africans, find their way safely to a tiny barrier island between Florida and Georgia. For two centuries, only formerly enslaved people and their descendants live there. A curse on white people hangs over the island, and none who ever set foot on it survive. Its last resident was Lovely Jackson, who departed as a teen in 1955. Today—well, in 2020—a developer called Tidal Breeze wants Florida’s permission to “develop” Dark Isle, which sits within bridge-building distance from the well-established Camino Island. The plot is an easy setup for Grisham, big people vs. little people. Lovely’s revered ancestors are buried on Dark Isle, which Hurricane Leo devastated from end to end. Lovely claims the islet’s ownership despite not having formal title, and she wants white folks to leave the place alone. But apparently Florida doesn’t have enough casinos and golf courses to suit some people. Surely developers can buy off that little old Black lady with a half million bucks. No? How about a million? “I wish they’d stop offering money,” Lovely complains. “I ain’t for sale.” Thus a non-jury court trial begins to establish ownership. The story has no legal fireworks, just ordinary maneuvering. The real fun is in the backstory, in the portrayal of the aptly named Lovely, and the skittishness of white people to step on the island as long as the ancient curse remains. Lovely has self-published a history of the island, and a sympathetic white woman named Mercer Mann decides to write a nonfiction account as well. When that book ultimately comes out, reviewers for Kirkus (and others) “raved on and on.” Don’t expect stunning twists, though early on Dark Isle gives four white guys a stark message. The tension ends with the judge’s verdict, but the remaining 30 pages bring the story to a satisfying conclusion.
Fine Grisham storytelling that his fans will enjoy.Pub Date: May 28, 2024
ISBN: 9780385545990
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
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