Artfully meshes the educational with the sensational.
A tale of two models, decades apart, and the Frick museum.
The latest in Davis’ series celebrating New York City landmarks (following The Lions of Fifth Avenue, 2020) features not only the Frick Collection, but several exemplars of public art, all images of the same Gilded Age model. By 1919, Lillian Carter, under the name Angelica, has earned a degree of fame as the model for sculptures gracing the New York Public Library, the Plaza Hotel, and many other venues. Groundlessly suspected of murder, Lillian plans to flee New York for Hollywood and a movie career. Instead, a series of improbable events leads her to steel magnate Henry Clay Frick’s mansion, where she’s hired as personal secretary to Miss Helen, Frick’s spinster daughter. In 1966, Veronica Weber, an ingénue model from a working-class background in London, lands a potentially life-altering assignment—a Vogue photo shoot at the Frick mansion–turned-museum. But after rebelling at the sexism on set, Veronica is left behind, stranded in the Frick when a blizzard and a blackout descend simultaneously on the city. In the alternating 1919 timeline, Frick offers Lillian, who has quickly become a savvy family retainer, a bonus if she can help marry Helen off to Richard Danforth, a reluctant suitor. Abetted by Joshua Lawrence, a Frick intern, Veronica continues a scavenger hunt, left unfinished in 1919, devised by Helen to educate Danforth about the Frick masterpieces. Overshadowing the action is the horrific death of Helen’s older sister and the brutality of Frick himself, who lays waste to his own family alongside other victims of his greed. Davis skillfully weaves these undercurrents into her parallel stories, which coalesce in a suspenseful search for a (fictitious) Frick heirloom: the pink Magnolia diamond. The motivations of the two protagonists are thin: Neither seems to have ambitions that can’t be easily derailed by a man. Although her privilege certainly renders her more autonomous, Helen emerges as the true heroine here.
Artfully meshes the educational with the sensational.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-18401-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”
Idyllic Catalina Island turns out to be just as crime infested as the rest of Los Angeles County in the latest series launch by the creator of Harry Bosch, Renée Ballard, and the Lincoln Lawyer.
Det. Sgt. Stilwell has been bounced off the county homicide squad and rusticized to Catalina, where the exclusive Black Marlin Club won’t admit even four-term Avalon Mayor Doug Allen to full membership and the most serious infraction seems to be the killing and cutting up of a buffalo, presumably by Henry Gaston, who operates Island Mystery Tours when he’s not threatening endangered species. All that changes with the discovery of a body sunk in the surrounding waters. The corpse, most recognizable by its streak of purple hair, is that of Leigh-Anne Moss, a Black Marlin server recently fired for fraternizing with members and guests she sees as potential sugar daddies. Stilwell is sufficiently invested in her murder to compete vigorously over jurisdiction with Rex Ahearn, the LA County homicide detective who kept his job when Stilwell lost his. Their rivalry, fueled by mutual contempt, is only the first hint that Stilwell will end up fighting his counterparts in law enforcement and local government at least as hard as he fights crooks like hit man Merris Spivak and Oscar “Baby Head” Terranova, Henry’s boss, who comes under sharper scrutiny when Henry disappears and ends up dead himself. Connelly handles his hero’s obligatory romance with assistant harbormaster Tash Dano and his increasingly wary alliance with assistant D.A. Monika Juarez with equal professionalism, and if the wrap-up leaves some loose ends dangling, well, that’s what franchises are for.
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780316588485
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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