Book Review: Green Girls

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

Green Girls     Amazon UK PB Amazon UK HC
Michael Kimball
Class/Genre:   Fiction   Thriller
Morrow, Dec 2002, $24.95, 400 pp.

In New England, writer Jacob Winter goes berserk when he learns his wife is having an affair. Unable to control his rage, he assaults his wife’s lover, ending in jail. Surprisingly, an old college crony Alix Callahan who he has not seen in well over a decade bails Jacob out of jail.

Alix asks Jacob and her exotic gardening business partner and lover July to meet her at a nearby large bridge. At the site, Jacob see Alix apparently fall to her death though her corpse is not found. The police consider Jacob with his record for violence as a prime murder suspect, but subsequent events make him wonder if Alix lives. July’s estranged husband is coming to collect two live hides and the drug money that his wife and her lover stole from him when they set him up to take the fall. Most important of all, Jacob wants to return to his family, but July has her hooks into him making extraction nearly impossible.

This regional noir is at its best when Jacob stays on center stage though his behavior is self-destructive. When the exciting story line turns to paranormal elements it loses its gritty edge of a secular world in chaos. Jacob is an intriguing character who Fraud would have loved to analyze while the rest of the cast adds depth to his seemingly fall into the abyss of hell. Readers who love adrenaline rush of non stop suspense that grows chillier by the paragraph will want to read GREEN GIRLS because Michael Kimball attains the pinnacle of suspense and keeps the thrill at that height until the climax.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner