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
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
A fresh and clever whodunit with an engaging twist.
A 16-year-old savant uses his Groundhog Day gift to solve his grandfather’s murder.
Nishizawa’s compulsively readable puzzle opens with the discovery of the victim, patriarch Reijiro Fuchigami, sprawled on a futon in the attic of his elegant mansion, where his family has gathered for a consequential announcement about his estate. The weapon seems to be a copper vase lying nearby. Given this setup, the novel might have proceeded as a traditional whodunit but for two delightful features. The first is the ebullient narration of Fuchigami’s youngest grandson, Hisataro, thrust into the role of an investigator with more dedication than finesse. The second is Nishizawa’s clever premise: The 16-year-old Hisataro has lived ever since birth with a condition that occasionally has him falling into a time loop that he calls "the Trap," replaying the same 24 hours of his life exactly nine times before moving on. And, of course, the murder takes place on the first day of one of these loops. Can he solve the murder before the cycle is played out? His initial strategies—never leaving his grandfather’s side, focusing on specific suspects, hiding in order to observe them all—fall frustratingly short. Hisataro’s comical anxiety rises with every failed attempt to identify the culprit. It’s only when he steps back and examines all the evidence that he discovers the solution. First published in 1995, this is the first of Nishizawa’s novels to be translated into English. As for Hisataro, he ultimately concludes that his condition is not a burden but a gift: “Time’s spiral never ends.”
A fresh and clever whodunit with an engaging twist.Pub Date: July 29, 2025
ISBN: 9781805335436
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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