A taut, often unnerving procedural with a memorable heroine and villain.
An FBI profiler’s past may link to a murderer’s in Regan’s (The Bones She Buried, 2019, etc.) thriller.
Agent Kassidy Bishop of the FBI’s Behavior Analysis Unit is on the hunt for a serial killer. At each crime scene, he leaves a message that reads “for you.” His M.O. is unusual in other ways, as well: The bodies show indications of torture that occurred after the victims were already dead. Kassidy suspects that they’re revenge killings of some kind, given the murderer’s recurring message. The novel alternates perspectives between first- and third-person, giving readers an early introduction to the killer, Wyatt Anderton, who’s obsessed with Kassidy and secretly spies on her. It’s revealed early on that, five years before, serial rapist Nico Sala tortured Kassidy, and that the resulting brain damage adversely affected her long-term memory. Wyatt, meanwhile, sometimes has blackouts and can’t remember all of his murders. As his control slips further away, he becomes an even greater threat—and Kassidy could be his next victim. As the killer’s identity and motive become clear, Regan concentrates her story less on the mystery than she does on the characters. The absorbing protagonist, who also lost her twin sister in an apparent suicide, is understandably reluctant to get close to anyone. Her skills are without question, however; as she and her partner, Agent TK Bennett, profile the killer, readers know that their insights are generally spot-on. Revelations about Wyatt’s past effectively humanize him, as both he and his younger sister endured abuse. But when he loses stretches of time, it can be terrifying; at one point, for instance, he suddenly finds himself in front of a victim with no memory of how he got there. Regan’s steadily paced narrative rarely slows down, and it delivers effective twists. Readers will likely be able to predict one of the more significant plot turns, but the author saves one for the end that they may not see coming.
A taut, often unnerving procedural with a memorable heroine and villain.Pub Date: June 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9968882-9-5
Page Count: 332
Publisher: Prodorutti Books
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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
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