A Nazi U-boat sunk 50 years ago off the Louisiana coast is the catalyst for New Iberia (La.) sheriff's deputy Dave Robicheaux's latest descent into the depths of human nature. Knowing that Dave had found the boat as a boy, drugstore mogul Hippo Bimstine offers him $10,000 to locate it again for salvage. Dave refuses but changes his mind (and ups the price) when he needs money to beat a bum murder rap facing his hired hand, Batist Perry: The rap is being pressed by vindictive New Orleans vice cop Nate Baxter, who is determined to get back at Dave and his PI buddy Clete Purcel. Dave's plan works — it convinces Nate's hard-nosed black sergeant, Lucinda Bergeron, to give information that puts Batist back on the street — but at a terrible price: Dave soon finds himself fighting against sinister club owners Max and Bobo Calucci, who want Clete's girlfriend to work out of taxicabs, and Tommy Lonighan, a typically reflective Burke villain (Dave: "I shouldn't have hit him.... He's a tormented man. The guy's got a furnace in his head") who's dying of prostate cancer but refuses to roll over on the Calucci brothers. But Dave's biggest troubles are still ahead: Magnetic neo-Nazi Will Buchalter (called in by Tommy? by the Caluccis?), determined to locate the U-boat ahead of Hippo, terrorizes Dave's wife, Bootsie, kidnaps and tortures Dave, and keeps disappearing into the sunset after executing his accomplices — all while Max and Bobo are contracting an off-limits kill and Dave's wrestling with Lucinda Bergeron and her main-chance son, Zoot, over the best way to nail the bad guys, avoid selling out, and maybe stay alive. Dave's adventures are usually dominated by a single violent, charismatic heavy. In squeezing Hippo, Tommy, the Caluccis, Will, and Dave himself into one book, Burke cuts himself off from the concentrated power of the masterly In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead (1993) but multiplies the possibilities of cathartic violence — and produces his darkest, densest novel yet.
Pub Date: Aug. 4, 1994
ISBN: 0-7868-6019-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1994
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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