Set aside a block of time to read the 12th in Lister’s series (Blood Oath, 2016, etc.), for it may be impossible to put...
A Florida prison chaplain with investigative experience reopens an ice-cold case that will change his life forever.
John Jordan’s troubles start with a phone request to rescue his drunken brother, Jake, from a bar. Jake used to be a deputy for his father, Jack Jordan, sheriff of Potter County. When Jack lost his re-election bid, both father and son were thrown out of work and feeling lost. But Jack has kept himself busy looking at cold cases, most recently the matter of beautiful, popular high school senior Janet Leigh Lester, whose car was found soaked in blood but whose body was never found. John’s relations with his whole family, especially his father, have been difficult, but when he learns that Jack has cancer, he agrees to help him review the case, which scarred many lives. Jack suspected but could never prove that Janet was a victim of Ted Bundy, who was rampaging through northern Florida at the time and was even spotted at a gas station where Janet stopped the night of her disappearance. Many thought her boyfriend, Ben Tillman, was the real killer, protected because his father, the sheriff of Jackson County, called on his friend Jack to take over the case. Nobody has a bad thing to say about Janet. Her friends loved her; her stepfather, Ronnie Lester, thought she was an angel; she helped Verna, her frail mother, care for Ralphie, her mentally and physically disabled brother; and she was active in school, church, and the 4-H club. Her death left behind a group of people torn by suspicion and guilt. Despite the difficulties involved in solving a 40-year-old case, John is determined to help his father, unaware of how high the price will be.
Set aside a block of time to read the 12th in Lister’s series (Blood Oath, 2016, etc.), for it may be impossible to put down. Conflicted characters and a shocking solution add up to an enthralling experience.Pub Date: May 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-888146-70-7
Page Count: 274
Publisher: Pulpwood Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
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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