A winning new detective who overcomes his demons while grappling with a case.
A debut novel follows a conflicted sleuth investigating a high-profile murder.
Andy Carrick is a former British Special Forces officer who is still struggling with his near-death experience in Afghanistan. Andy has been treating his PTSD with alcohol as the security firm that he inherited crumbles thanks to his absentee management. He’s hiding out at a cottage in rural France when a chance to rejoin the real world presents itself. He gets a call from famed advertising guru Tony Maine, who is nearby visiting a former employee named Emma Luc, the wife of Andy’s mate Didier. At a major advertising awards event in Cannes, a maverick creative director has had his throat slashed, and Maine wants Andy to investigate the homicide quietly. It soon becomes clear that Andy is a soldier, not a detective. After Maine’s suggested line of inquiry doesn’t pan out, Andy comes up with his own, equally unsuccessful theories. Soon, he’s in trouble with the local police and then on the run, as he discovers he’s been set up as a distraction. Andy uses his military training to stay alive, leaving a trail of bodies as he attempts to solve the murder. Then he teams up with some of the contacts he has made in Cannes to try to bring the criminals to justice. Newman skillfully presents Andy as one of the many soldiers who have trouble resettling into civilian life for a number of reasons. What haunts Andy are the nightmares of his imprisonment and the marriage that fell apart after a former squad mate seduced his wife. Which, naturally, left Andy living in solitary: “His regime of savage self-reproach had descended into a lifestyle unsuited to company and he’d lowered the curtain on friends and foes alike.” It is heartening to watch Andy come back to life once he has a mission again. His immersion in the rampant fakery of advertising finds him on a field of battle that he doesn’t understand, and the characters from that world are generally unlikable. Newman’s engrossing narrative is well-paced, with Andy frequently facing and overcoming new challenges as he starts to dig himself out of his depression. Here’s hoping the author has more adventures planned for his appealing hero.
A winning new detective who overcomes his demons while grappling with a case.Pub Date: July 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-648-24942-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Brandnewman
Review Posted Online: July 14, 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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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