From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. This enigmatic noir thriller from New Zealand author Taylor (
Heaven) opens on a friendly pool game between disarming narrator Mark Chamberlain and property developer Rory Jones at an Auckland billiards parlor. After the two men part company, Chamberlain admits, "the following night I broke into his apartment and stole everything that wasn't nailed down." Chamberlain, we learn, is a professional burglar. In the apartment, to his surprise, he discovers that Jones is the father of Caroline May, a high school classmate who disappeared many years earlier. Taylor brilliantly interweaves clues concerning Caroline's disappearance, including some implicating Chamberlain himself, with the thief's insightful reflections on appearance and reality. The narrator's secret criminal life comes under threat of exposure after someone slips an old poster seeking information about Caroline into his apartment. Taylor, who compares favorably with Russell Banks and Paul Auster, should appeal to readers who appreciate sophisticated plots and fully human characters.
(Apr.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
New Zealand author Taylor (
Shirker, 2000) is a stylish writer of noir novels who has been compared to Ross Macdonald. But his seductive command of the language and his elegiac tone more closely recall Thomas McGuane. In eloquently precise prose, Taylor evokes the life of small-time thief Mark Chamberlain. The night he invades the home of the parents of Caroline May is the night his carefully regimented schedule begins to unravel. He is deeply shaken upon seeing the room that has been kept as a shrine to the girl who went missing decades ago at the age of 14. In successive, elliptical flashbacks, his relationships with Caroline and with her best friend, Varina, are revealed, as is his obsession with finding out what happened. It is rumored that she was on a plane that crashed in Antarctica but, in the final analysis, it is impossible to know what really happened, prompting feelings of longing and ennui in those who have been left behind. Vivid characters and mesmerizing language contribute to the moody atmosphere.
Joanne WilkinsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
