An exciting P.I. tale with intriguing thriller elements.
In Kageyama’s historical thriller, a Japanese American detective confronts government secrecy and the dangerous San Francisco underworld while investigating a murder.
This fast-paced sequel to Kageyama’s Hunters Point (2023) takes readers back to 1959 San Francisco, where private eye Katsuhiro “Kats” Takemoto is investigating the brutal killing of Mai Su Han, a Chinese American sex worker. It turns out that the murder is connected to a secret Cold War government program called Midnight Climax, in which CIA agents test psychedelic drugs, including LSD and mescaline, on unwitting subjects. During the tests, women entice male subjects into special safe houses, where agents film them behind one-way glass; the men are given drug-laced drinks, and the effects are carefully monitored and analyzed. This time, government agents mistakenly lured an extremely dangerous ex-soldier, Steven Epps, into their web—and his violent reaction left Mai and a CIA agent dead. Now, an unstable murderer is loose in the city: “He was already a trained killer,” says the key official in charge of the project. “The drugs made him stronger, faster and more unpredictable than anyone else would believe.” Soon, Kats finds out that Lin Tai Lo, the leader of the Hop Sing Tong and a powerful force in San Francisco’s criminal world, is also determined to find Epps. He’s related to the dead girl and believes that a rival Tong may be behind her murder. Kats, along with his amateur sleuth girlfriend Molly Hayes, his close friend Shigeyoshi “Shig” Murao, and soon-to-be-famous real-life author Ken Kesey, scour the city’s underworld of clubs, bars, and hideouts. This tightly written novel will appeal to those who enjoy tales of Cold War–era intrigue, San Francisco history, and 20th-century Asian American cultural life. Readers are quickly drawn into the story as the author successfully moves back and forth between the powerful forces determined to cover up the secret drug program and the intrepid but vulnerable team of investigators drawing closer to the truth. Kats, Molly, and Shig are all well developed and likable, and their interactions feel authentic and true to the story’s historical setting.
An exciting P.I. tale with intriguing thriller elements.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 2024
ISBN: 978-1940300818
Page Count: 372
Publisher: St. Petersburg Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.
A retelling of Pinocchio from Geppetto's point of view.
The novel purports to be the memoirs of Geppetto, a carpenter from the town of Collodi, written in the belly of a vast fish that has swallowed him. Fortunately for Geppetto, the fish has also engulfed a ship, and its supplies—fresh water, candles, hardtack, captain’s logbook, ink—are what keep the Swallowed Man going. (Collodi is, of course, the name of the author of the original Pinocchio.) A misfit whose loneliness is equaled only by his drive to make art, Geppetto scours his surroundings for supplies, crafting sculptures out of pieces of the ship’s wood, softened hardtack, mussel shells, and his own hair, half hoping and half fearing to create a companion once again that will come to life. He befriends a crab that lives all too briefly in his beard, then mourns when “she” dies. Alone in the dark, he broods over his past, reflecting on his strained relationship with his father and his harsh treatment of his own “son”—Pinocchio, the wooden puppet that somehow came to life. In true Carey fashion, the author illustrates the novel with his own images of his protagonist’s art: sketches of Pinocchio, of woodworking tools, of the women Geppetto loved; photos of driftwood, of tintypes, of a sculpted self-portrait with seaweed hair. For all its humor, the novel is dark and claustrophobic, and its true subject is the responsibilities of creators. Remembering the first time he heard of the sea monster that was to swallow him, Geppetto wonders if the monster is somehow connected to Pinocchio: “The unnatural child had so thrown the world off-balance that it must be righted at any cost, and perhaps the only thing with the power to right it was a gigantic sea monster, born—I began to suppose this—just after I cracked the world by making a wooden person.” Later, contemplating his self-portrait bust, Geppetto asks, “Monster of the deep. Am I, then, the monster? Do I nightmare myself?”
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18887-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
