A strong female lead stars in this riveting cross-genre tale.
In this debut novel, a Southern woman who spent her adolescence on her own tracks a killer.
Tina Brooks, raised by her great-aunt, is 6 when she finally meets her birth mother, Antoinette. “Twanie” had her daughter in high school—after a rich jock classmate raped her. Twanie becomes Tina’s sole caretaker and is a strict but protective mom. Shockingly, she vanishes with her current boyfriend when her daughter is barely a teen. Tina, who’s Black, is scared and alone until a few kindhearted adults come to her aid. Though still young, she perseveres both as a student and a hard worker. Tina is usually withdrawn but eventually befriends Denise, a co-worker. When her new friend unexpectedly dies, Tina suspects she was murdered. Surely her co-worker’s abusive boyfriend is the killer. But Tina has never met him, and though she knows his first name and that he’s a cop, the Richmond Police Department has no record of him. So she hunts a killer, with Denise’s noticeably handsome brother, Kennard, lending a hand and, perhaps, a romantic interest. Seay and her older sister, Coles, who died before publication, have written a superb coming-of-age tale fused with a solid murder mystery. Character development is top-notch; the narrative initially centers on Twanie, making her sudden absence truly poignant. Both she and winsome Tina endure tough childhoods and strive to be independent. The men aren’t quite as engaging, so neither Kennard nor another potential suitor seem worthy of Tina. Despite instances of violence and relentless hardships, this story is relatively buoyant. Similarly, the authors tend to describe people in diverting fashion, like Tina’s “intimidating” boss-to-be, a “Xena Warrior Princess with all white hair.”
A strong female lead stars in this riveting cross-genre tale.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9985576-5-6
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.
Someone is stalking the streets of Lt. Eve Dallas’s New York, intent on bringing new life to sex workers by snuffing out their old ones.
In 2061, prostitutes are called licensed companions, and that’s Leesa Culver’s job description when she’s accosted by a plausible-looking artist who wants to hire her as a model for the night. Before the night is over, she’s been drugged, strangled, costumed, and posed as an uncanny replica of Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring. The shock of the crime is deepened by the murder the following night of licensed companion Bobby Ren, whose body is discovered at an art gallery entrance costumed and posed as Gainsborough’s Blue Boy. The killer clearly has an obsessive agenda, a rapid-fire timetable, and access to unlimited financial resources that have allowed him to commission expensive custom-made outfits for the victims. This last detail both marks his power and points to the way Dallas, her gazillionaire husband, Roarke, and her sidekick, Det. Delia Peabody, will track him down by methodically narrowing the field of consumers who’ve purchased the costly costumes. After identifying the guilty party two-thirds of the way through the story, they’ll still face an uphill battle convicting a killer with no conscience, no respect for the law, and a budget that would easily cover the means to jump bail, remove his ankle tracker, and hire a private jet to escape to a foreign land with no extradition treaty. Robb keeps it all consistently absorbing by sweating every procedural detail along with her heroine. Only Dallas’ climactic interrogation of her prisoner is a letdown, because it’s perfectly obvious how she’s going to wangle a confession out of him.
High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781250370822
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
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