Persistently riveting; should pique interest in the series’ follow-up—and the preceding 10.
In Neal’s (Bone Hook, 2015, etc.) latest thriller, Hawaiian cop Sgt. Lei Texeira returns to find the killer of a child, while her husband, Lt. Michael Stevens, struggles to escape captivity in Central America.
Lei’s the type of woman who’d go alone to save her husband when she learns probable terrorists kidnapped Michael during his overseas stint training military troops. But Capt. Cherry Joy Omura can’t spare Lei, opting to immerse her in a case—a child’s skull washing ashore in Hana. Simply trying to locate where a local woman discovered the skull, however, quickly intensifies Lei’s investigation. She stumbles onto a marijuana farm, where a man uses children for slave labor and ensures they’re armed and willing to kill. Michael, meanwhile, is imprisoned in a pit with several others working for Security Solutions. The captors separate Michael when he gets sick, and he discovers their plans: if the company doesn’t pay a ransom soon, they’ll start killing the abductees. He manages to escape and free fellow contractors, but now the group must brave a largely unfamiliar jungle with the hopes of making it safely to Nicaragua. While Michael and the rest face crocodiles and venomous snakes, Lei dodges bullets and hunts a dangerous man who may have murdered a child. There’s not much mystery in the novel—Lei’s investigation essentially unravels on its own—but plenty of action and suspense. Neal’s writing is tenacious, highlighted by her masterly crosscutting of two exhilarating scenes: Michael’s group running through the Honduran forest and Lei fleeing armed men in the Maui jungle. Dramatic repercussions are equally solid, including Lei being upset that Michael told her his deployment date only the day before he left. Neal knows how to tease her previous novels with panache, like “that other trip,” Lei’s personal mission targeting an enemy on the Big Island, resulting in an apparently less than cheery outcome. The story finally reveals the kidnappers’ identities in the midst of a twist ending. It’s an unquestionably startling turn, but while Neal keeps it sensible, the climax isn’t as strong as its lead-up and will likely disappoint some readers.
Persistently riveting; should pique interest in the series’ follow-up—and the preceding 10.Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9967066-6-7
Page Count: 276
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 11, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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