An often humorous mystery that winningly portrays a very particular time and place.
In Johnson’s crime novel set in the late 1990s, an inexperienced private eye in New York City unexpectedly gets mixed up in multiple murders.
It’s 1998, and 20-something Nico Kelly is a licensed PI who does mundane work for a lawyer named Finch, shadowing city employees suspected of committing insurance fraud. Specifically, he surveils supposedly injured workers, trying to catch them performing suspiciously vigorous activities. Nico’s personal life is also dismal. His father, once an “open-mic popular” musician, died of an overdose a few years ago, and he’s lost contact with his Ecuadorian mother, although he still sees his aunt, Cookie. Everything changes when Nico, on a routine job, gets videotaped footage of a cop’s murder by two fellow officers. Finch suggests giving the VHS tape to a former member of a police-corruption committee. After another murder, the officer assigned to the case, Detective Hong, looks at them as suicides, but Nico isn’t convinced—especially after his video camera is stolen from his apartment. Next, someone close to Cookie dies under strange circumstances, and she begs Nico to find out what happened. Now he’s doing “real PI shit,” including breaking into buildings and creating a fake identity, but his investigation may not yield the answers he wants. Johnson ably gives his story a vivid sense of atmosphere. Nico’s world is gritty but cool, populated with establishments like the Doray, a tavern with a black interior and exterior; the 24-hour record shop Accidental Records; and “self-aware” bar Max Fish, all sharing space with ever-present rats, cockroaches, and garbage; characters eat New York staples such as pizza and bialys. Johnson skillfully imbues it all with a clear sense of the time, when Rudy Guiliani was New York’s mayor; one character is convinced a Y2K computer meltdown is imminent, and Nico uses old tech like pagers and pay phones. Although the story centers on a navigation of societal corruption, the witty dialogue throughout and underachiever Nico’s wry narration (“I sort of got shot”) counteract the darkness, ultimately giving readers a cautious sense of hope.
An often humorous mystery that winningly portrays a very particular time and place.Pub Date: March 11, 2025
ISBN: 9798218524012
Page Count: 272
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.
A successful Vermont podcaster who’s elicited confessions from dozens of criminals finds herself on the other side of the table, in the hottest of hot seats, over her own troubled past.
Poe Webb was only 13 when she saw her mother, Margaret McMillian, get stabbed to death by the man she’d picked up for a quickie. Poe had vowed revenge, but how could a kid find and avenge herself on a stranger who’d vanished as quickly as he appeared? In the long years since then, Poe’s made a name for herself as a top true-crime podcaster who routinely invites her guests to tell her audience exactly what they did. Now, she’s being pressed, and pressed hard, by Ian Hindley, whose fake name echoes those of England’s Moors Murderers, to join him in a livestream her fans will find riveting because, as Hindley tells her, he’s actually Leopold Hutchins, the pickup who stabbed her mother 14 times when she failed to use her safe word. Skeptical? Hindley knows endless details about the killing that were never released by the police. If Poe won’t do the broadcast, Hindley threatens to harm everyone she loves: her father; her producer and lover, Kip Nguyen; and her black Lab, Bailey. And there’s one more complication that makes the pressure on Poe even more unbearable. Seven years ago, against all odds, she succeeded in tracking Leopold Hutchins from Burlington to New York and killing him herself. In fact, it’s that murder that Hindley most wants her to talk about. Which bully is more fearsome, the man who’s threatening her or the man she killed?
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781464226229
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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