A riveting novel ripped from the headlines of the Wall Street Journal.
Boston’s rising-star financial detectives McBain and O’Daniel uncover a scheme of fraud and murder in Masters’ debut mystery.
Masters’ story takes place in Boston’s downtown, near the financial district and in the wealthy suburb of Brookline soon after the financial meltdown and Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. Boozy McBain, a Wall Street trader–turned-detective, and his partner, Boston O’Daniel, a fiery redhead and the police captain’s daughter, reveal a talent for financial fraud investigation and for reaching large settlements with money managers who’ve scammed their clients. While celebrating his latest victory at his favorite watering hole, McBain meets Christina Baker, a 30-something raven-haired beauty with a sharp wit and even sharper tongue. His interests are purely social, but Baker has just lost her inheritance and her parents in an apparent double suicide; she wants her money back and justice. With mixed motives and strong reservations, McBain agrees to investigate the case on his own time. When O’Daniel discovers her partner’s off-the-books activities, she’s intrigued by the case and joins the paper chase. Although McBain and O’Daniel can’t find proof of criminal activity, their client presses, certain that her parents’ financial adviser, Roche is somehow involved. As the investigation turns up new leads, ties are made between her parents’ physician, Lehmann, and Roche. Pulling on the loose threads, the detectives begin to unravel an elaborate scheme of fraud, murder and personal betrayal in which greed, passion and family secrets hide behind proper appearances. Masters’ well-written story weaves together exquisite plot twists, believable characters and realistic dialogue, resulting in a story that flies by in vividly descriptive writing: In McBain’s favorite bar, “The room hummed softly to the engine of glass, ice, and conversation,” and in an exchange between Baker and McBain: “You do like your martinis….Why do you drink so many?” “They’re what some of us have instead of children.” A novel this good isn’t beginner’s luck; indeed, Masters’ consummate writing skills, his work on Wall Street and his experience living in Boston drive a most authentic storyline.
A riveting novel ripped from the headlines of the Wall Street Journal.Pub Date: March 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-0615956589
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Lost Haven Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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