A debut effort that’s ambitious in scope but often limited by its unsteady execution.
In Janson’s (The Child in Our Hearts, 2012, etc.) first mystery, a pediatrician sued for malpractice finds himself at the epicenter of a far-reaching conspiracy.
Eastern Kentucky native Joe Nelson owes his medicine practice to a fortuitous accident: In his youth, he was a coal miner, and a roof collapse during a routine excavation left him trapped. Thanks to a courageous, quick-thinking doctor, Joe made it out—as an amputee, albeit, but still alive. Years later, he has paid that salvation forward by pursuing a career in pediatrics. All is well until 4-year-old Linda Murphy dies in his care, and the toxicologist’s report reveals an overdose of Lidocaine as the cause of death. Joe’s insistence that he provided the correct dosage pales in the face of a malpractice suit brought on by Linda Murphy’s extremely wealthy, powerful family. With his questionably competent defense attorney, an imminent but strangely amicable divorce from his wife, a blossoming romance and a determination to uncover the true circumstances of Linda’s death, Joe has his hands full. Snooping into medical records and investigating potential profiteers earns him enemies on all sides—the hospital, the courts, even the local police force—and sets into motion a race against time. Regrettably, the mystery at the heart of the novel is bordered by clumsy, often distracting syntax: “The server was there almost immediately as if he had been waiting for them to be ready to order, which he probably had been.” As often as the story hits its stride, it is mired by awkward turns of phrase, repetition—“The grounds were kept and lit well…They arrived at the plaque at the center of a well-lit area”—and bland dialogue. Janson’s experience as a physician shines through in the clinically written sections, particularly the court proceedings and explanations of medical procedures, which are professional, articulate and deftly handled. While the grand reveal satisfactorily ties numerous loose ends together, it’s diluted by its predictability; astute readers will likely guess (or at least suspect) the criminal mastermind a quarter of the way into the book.
A debut effort that’s ambitious in scope but often limited by its unsteady execution.Pub Date: March 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-0988515727
Page Count: 238
Publisher: SDP Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 11, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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