A gripping crime tale that becomes as complicated as its main character.
A hit man finds no easy career exit in this Florida thriller.
Sunny Sarasota starkly contrasts with South’s (Suicide Tango, 2019, etc.) dark story, in which titular character Tommy Darlington works as a well-paid assassin hired by “unforgiving men with silent billions.” A former Army ranger and low-profile artist, Tommy initially has no problem with the deadly commissions he refers to as “taking out the trash.” His girlfriend, Rachel, a successful novelist, supports the couple, as publicly Tommy ekes out a living as a nighttime cabbie. Rachel knows nothing about her boyfriend’s deadly business or his ill-gotten gains that amount to millions, all of which he has hidden and earmarked to fund their retirement in Costa Rica. Witnessing a higher-up known as the Old Man feed Tommy’s bespoke-suited handler, Alfred, to a dozen alligators, the hit man has a change of heart about his line of work. The shift in his attitude is bad for business, and his employers take notice. Then Rachel disappears. Readers may feel an adrenalin rush as Tommy desperately tries to find her. There’s a disconnect between his incomprehension for his employers’ “casual disregard for human life” and his own sniper activities, although some kills bother him. Snuffing out an elegant older woman who heads a foundation that a dirty organization wants in its portfolio, Tommy cries along with the doomed victim. Fans of the award-winning television series Barry will find similarities between the show’s main character and Tommy, as both are damaged, military-trained hit men with a desire to change but seemingly no way to do so. Told primarily in the first person, the novel will elicit readers’ sympathies for Tommy’s impaired psyche as he works for men dealing in the “top three commodities in the world: firearms, drugs, and humans.” The author’s descriptions—be they sexy, humorous, or terrifying—are notable: for example, “she fragranced her way to the bedroom,” “his huge sausage fingers,” and “hollow eye sockets were illuminated by a deadlight that made me rocket-vomit and cough in rolling spasms.”
A gripping crime tale that becomes as complicated as its main character.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-944855-20-8
Page Count: 276
Publisher: Adagio Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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