This cocktail's recipe would be one part Travis McGee, one part Carl Hiaasen, and a salt shaker full of magical realism.
A beach bum who's a magnet for bad juju struggles to maintain his hard-knock life and idle pleasures amid the heat-seeking trouble headed his way.
Gulf Coast native Cooper made a memorable debut with The Marauders (2015). This second act delivers an even messier, nastier, more brutal, and engaging yarn that spans decades on a remote outpost deep in the wilds of Florida. Most crime novels zero in on a single target: a murder, a heist, or just regular bloody revenge. In this fascinating decadeslong trek, we follow perpetually stoned Reed Crowe and his nearly endless run of bad luck. Our titular loser is stuck, both psychically and physically, on Emerald Island, one of those fabled tourist traps from the 1950s, where Reed, circa 1980, manages a run-down motel and a pathetic amusement park, The Florida Man Mystery House. There’s an ex-wife, an internationally known artist named Heidi, as well as the memory of their dead little girl, Lily, which haunts him daily. As in many small towns, the denizens of Emerald Island live in a state of perpetual, tentative détente that threatens to erupt into violence at any moment. Among them are Wayne Wade, Reed’s pervy, drug-addled buddy; a kid named Eddie Maldonado who insists on helping with Reed’s various schemes; and most importantly, Henry Yahchilane, a quiet but dangerous loner who marks Reed as a threat to one of his most closely held secrets. Things get way out of hand when a villain named Hector “Catface” Morales, a Mariel boatlift veteran and sadistic assassin long thought dead, resurfaces with a plan to punish Reed for a dope deal gone wrong years ago. Add a few biblical hurricanes, the occasional sea monster, and Jimmy Buffet and stir.
This cocktail's recipe would be one part Travis McGee, one part Carl Hiaasen, and a salt shaker full of magical realism.Pub Date: July 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13331-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Forget the tangled backstory, focus on the game of cat and mouse, and enjoy.
Lt. Eve Dallas and her colleagues in the New York Police and Security Department step outside their comfort zone into counterterrorism.
Back in 2024, during the stressful time of the Urban Wars, a courageous band calling themselves The Twelve fought Dominion and other violent fringe groups that sought to end civilization as we know it, despite the presence of a traitor in their own midst. Now, 37 years later, someone’s killed Giovanni Rossi, a retired cybersecurity expert who was one of The Twelve, an hour or so after a summons—ostensibly from another veteran of the group—brought him from Rome to New York. On the body, officers called to the scene find a copy of Dallas’ business card that’s been embellished with a flamboyant threat to annihilate the seven surviving members of The Twelve. Obligingly inviting all seven to New York—a move you’d think would make it a lot easier for their nemesis to wipe them all out at once—Dallas soon forms a theory about the killer’s identity and sets a trap to draw him out. But her plan turns into a narrow miss, upping the stakes on both sides, for now the killer knows Dallas is on to him. It’s in the nature of the case that there’s less mystery and detection than usual in this long-running franchise—the biggest surprise turns out to be the connection between Dallas and her quarry—but the thrills keep on coming, and the final interrogation, though highly predictable in its broad outlines, is as satisfying as ever.
Forget the tangled backstory, focus on the game of cat and mouse, and enjoy.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781250370792
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
© 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.
