Solid entertainment courtesy of this thriller’s cold but tenacious protagonist.
In this third installment of a series, a detective’s latest investigation puts him in the crosshairs of a dirty politician and a dangerous man with mob ties.
LAPD detective Matt Jones is on medical leave following a harrowing serial killer case in Philadelphia. Back in Los Angeles, he discovers that his shrink doesn’t think he’s ready to return to the field. As a result of the diagnosis, Matt’s supervisor assigns him a “murder lite.” It’s a body buried in Elysian Park, and cops soon identify 15-year-old Sophia Ramirez. She appears to be the victim of a rape/murder, but none of the evidence points to anyone. Matt does, however, discover a videotaped encounter between Sophia and Robert Gambini, the nephew of crime boss Joseph Gambini. Another buried body guides Matt to DMG Waste Management, a local company, and its three co-owners, who have a mysterious relationship with the younger Gambini. Now the detective surmises DMG is a site for drug distribution, but there’s an unexpected hurdle. Dee Colon, a powerful but corrupt city councilwoman, wants Matt to drop the co-owners as persons of interest in his investigation. This doesn’t prevent the detective from continuing surveillance on the men, so Colon retaliates by targeting his position and threatening to deport Sophia’s grieving parents. The councilwoman later indirectly condemns Matt on TV by making it seem as if he’s unconcerned with solving Sophia’s case. Meanwhile, Robert Gambini may be implementing more violent means to stop Matt; when the detective finds someone willing to talk, an assault in a heavily populated area results in deaths and injuries. Matt rushes to ensnare the murder suspects before he’s unemployed—or worse. With an early focus on the possible murderers, Ellis’ (The Love Killings, 2016, etc.) series entry is more thriller than mystery. The author works this to great effect as the story reveals the burden of unearthing evidence. Matt, for example, is fairly certain he’s found the right men for the crimes, but he must admit to the police chief, at least initially, that he has nothing substantial on them. He nevertheless knows without a doubt that Colon is deceitful, but she’s evidently too influential to touch, making her the tale’s most formidable villain. When Matt denies her unfounded accusations (including planted evidence), Colon says with a smile, “The trouble is that no one will ever believe it.” Ellis generates an impressive amount of suspense, particularly when Matt is trailing suspects: In one scene, he follows someone in a car, repeatedly altering his speed to maintain a reasonable distance before ultimately continuing on foot. As a detective, Matt is determined and typically humorless; he asks people direct questions and is often blunt. This makes for a somber narrative, especially coupled with Matt’s enduring Colon’s televised character assassination as well as a beat down or two. But the detective’s frankness also leads to brief conversations that, along with periodic action sequences, provide the book with a swift pace. Although this installment is not closely tied to the preceding two novels, its ending implies that Matt’s multivolume tale is far from over.
Solid entertainment courtesy of this thriller’s cold but tenacious protagonist.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-08-199925-4
Page Count: 334
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2019
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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