A consistently thrilling opening installment featuring plenty of blood and bombs.
A suspense yarn that pits a former military man against a nefarious band of lawless terrorists.
Sgt. John Bishop, a decorated 14-year Green Beret combat veteran, returns home from the Middle East hoping to resume the life that he’d left behind. That life includes his beautiful girlfriend, Maria, who’s been breathlessly anticipating his return. Hines ably fleshes out Bishop’s backstory, in which the protagonist grew up in a gangster family. Bishop was raised by his uncle Gonzalo Valdez, the leader of the largest organized crime syndicate in the New York City area, who’s becoming even more widely known, and feared, as the gang grows in prominence. It becomes clear that the city has changed a lot since the last time Bishop was there, but he’s still grateful to be home, and he’s hoping for a peaceful return to normalcy. However, he gets himself arrested, along with his cousin Felix, on his first night home, and he soon has his hands full with intrigue. While out celebrating his new engagement to Maria, Bishop’s “Spidey Sense” kicks in, and he uses his Green Beret training to single-handedly interrupt a terrorist suicide bombing, scheduled to detonate in Union Square in Manhattan. From this point on, the novel’s momentum picks up as Bishop is heralded for bravery by the national press. He also becomes a prime target for a “bloody public statement” by members of a Middle Eastern terrorist cell (including a leader based in Brooklyn) who are organizing themselves to carry out more attacks on American soil. Compounding the menace are entanglements involving a wealthy corrupt former politician and a long-forgotten crime. This is a rollicking debut, the first book in a series. In it, Hines dexterously keeps each of his many plot elements moving along furiously as his protagonist, despite his ample physical strength and intelligence, finds himself overwhelmed by lethal threats. Eventually, Bishop recruits the assistance of Uncle Gonzalo and his well-organized family brigade of tough mobsters to help him drive the terrorists out and take them all down. Throughout the novel, the author clearly shows his penchant for nonstop action, and as a result, he never lets the hero rest easy: Later, there’s a ruthless hit man stalking Bishop and his family—one with a sharpshooter’s laserlike precision. Overall, this novel reveals itself to be a nuanced and impressively constructed debut. Hines shows himself to be masterful at pacing and plot progression as well as effective at supplying gritty characterization. Throughout this multilayered narrative, he particularly demonstrates a unique talent for realistic dialogue—often making use of a Goodfellas-style vernacular—which complements the story well as characters find themselves embroiled in a seemingly endless streak of deadly ordeals. Fans of suspense fiction will find much to appreciate here—particularly those who are unafraid of raw, bloody, ultraviolent sequences. It’s a provocative, densely plotted action tale even if it’s not for the squeamish.
A consistently thrilling opening installment featuring plenty of blood and bombs.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9970919-1-5
Page Count: 450
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 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
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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