Rendell just keeps getting better and better. A Judgment in Stone (1977) was a tour de force in her crime-from-the-criminal-point-of-view mode. A Sleeping Life (1978) brought back Inspector Wexford at his best. And now, without losing an iota of the understated, unsentimental crispness that is her trademark, she expands slightly beyond the mystery/crime genre: this new story has a double plot a bit reminiscent of Victor Canning, and it exudes a warmth rarely found in Rendell-land. The launchpad for both plot lines is a pathetic bank robbery in a Suffolk village. The two young misfits who rob the bank at lunchtime do get away with 4000 pounds, but they must also take with them homely, busty teller Joyce—who has seen their faces. (Their stocking masks get drenched in the rain.) While the panicky robbers and surly prisoner Joyce set up an impossible, awful, sexless menage a trois in a seedy London suburb, someone else is, on the other hand, enjoying himself: bank-manager Alan Groombridge, unhappily married and a bookish daydreamer, was watching the robbery while hiding in a closet (fondling 3000 pounds in bank cash as was his wont), and he has grabbed the opportunity to run away to London with his small fortune—the police, et al., believe him to have been kidnapped along with Joyce. So Rendell cuts back and forth from the increasingly grim state of affairs at the robbers' fiat (one of them is coming clown with hepatitis, the other's gone round the bend) to Alan's rebirth in the nicest neighborhoods in London—new name, new home, and miraculous new love. But. . . Alan feels guilty about running away, about not helping the police to find poor kidnapped Joyce—so when he accidentally stumbles on the trail of the robbers, he must follow that trail and try to locate Joyce himself. The dark comedy and bright romance here quickly shift to taut drama and tragedy—but Rendell supports every jolt of suspense with dazzling shorthand characterization and detail-perfect atmosphere. A can't-stop-reading, humanized melodrama that could also be, in the right hands, the makings of a gem of a movie.
Pub Date: July 27, 1979
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1979
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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