Green Girls [Mass Market Paperback]

Michael Kimball (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 28, 2003

A writer, a father, a husband, the owner of a strictly ordered life, Jacob Winter is not a man prone to violence -- until the day he walks in unexpectedly on his wife's affair. Awakening in a small-town Maine jail with no memory of his alleged rampage, he is bailed out by Alix Callahan, a mysterious ethnobotanist who claims to own a small piece of his past. Drawn into her obsessive relationship with July, an exotic Indian beauty from the rainforests of South America, Jacob is simultaneously mesmerized and unnerved by the two women's strange erotic dance as his meticulously controlled world slips even farther out of its orbit -- leading him to a clandestine meeting at the top of a bridge, where he helplessly watches Alix plunge 250 feet into the raging waters below. A suicide, a murder, neither, or both pull Jacob Winter into a twisted game of dark deceptions and psychological terror, one that could destroy his sanity and his soul.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Known for his idiosyncratic characters, erotic nuance and edgy plots, Kimball (Mouth to Mouth) stays true to form with his new fiction noir. An imposing bridge separating New Hampshire from Maine serves as the gothic centerpiece to this complex tale of murder, passion, jealousy and revenge. Jailed for assaulting wife Laura's psychiatrist lover, struggling author Jacob Winter is unexpectedly bailed out by Alix Callahan, a college classmate whom he hasn't seen for 15 years. She and her mysterious lover, July, operate an exotic gardening business, though it's immediately clear that all is not right between the two women. Soon Jacob and July are summoned to that imposing bridge by a frantic Alix; July shoots her and she falls to her death-or does she? Alix's body is never found and strange occurrences (not the least of which is someone else's murder) suggest she may still be alive. Meanwhile, July's husband, a sinister Colombian shaman, has escaped from a Florida prison and is making his way up the coast, looking for revenge and the drug money Alix and July stole from him. Estranged from Laura, Jacob foolishly (though he rarely shows good judgment throughout) accepts July's offer to stay with her, setting off a long, strange and possibly deadly seduction. Despite a promising start, the level of suspense is inconsistent and Kimball resorts to some hokey plot elements (psychic visions, poison frogs) in an effort to keep things interesting. Still, this diabolic epic is well calculated to keep readers who can suspend disbelief turning the pages.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Though Kimball's latest is described as a psychological thriller, the only suspense here is wondering what less-than-intelligent behavior the hero will exhibit next. Writer Jacob Winter's marriage is dealt a deathblow when he comes home to find his wife enjoying an intimate dinner with her psychiatrist boss. Jacob loses it and ends up jailed for an assault on his wife's lover-an act he doesn't remember committing. He is bailed out by Alix Callahan, a woman he hasn't seen since college, and in short order, he is caught up in Alix's very messy personal life, attracted to her partner (a mysterious young woman from Colombia with an ex who's out to get her), and a suspect in Alix's subsequent disappearance. With Mouth to Mouth and Undone, Kimball proved that he could write tight suspense novels. Unfortunately, he falters here. The story meanders, too many of the supporting characters are poorly developed, and the villain was obvious from the beginning. For larger public libraries with a dedicated fan base only.
Jane Jorgenson, Alicia Ashman Lib., Madison, WI
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: HarperTorch (October 28, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060087382
• ISBN-13: 978-0060087388
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,275,850 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars strong regional noir, December 19, 2002

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Green Girls: A Novel of Suspense (Hardcover)

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

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An atmospheric noir thriller, August 28, 2004

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Green Girls: A Novel of Suspense (Hardcover)

Anyone who has taken the coastal route in or out of Maine is familiar with the unusual setting of the crucial elements in Kimball's latest noir thriller - the big I-95 bridge. The Maine author's steamy, riveting page-turner takes place in Kittery, ME, and Portsmouth, NH, and the primary action takes place on, or in the shadow of, that dominating bridge.

The book opens with a brief prologue: the protagonist, Jacob Winter, plummets from the top of the bridge, experiencing an untimely burst of insight, "seeing how things came to be." Part One drops back to find Jacob in jail for assaulting his former psychiatrist, Price Ashworth, after returning home early with his young son from a Red Sox game, to find his wife and the good doctor enjoying the aftermath of a romantic dinner. Though Jacob has only a blurred memory of the assault, there's no doubt he not only delivered the concussing blow, but destroyed much of the beautiful furniture he had made for the house over his 12-year marriage.

His wife has sent some significant belongings to the jail - a sleeping bag and his laptop computer among them - but has not bailed him out. That favor has fallen mysteriously to Alix Callahan, a woman Jacob has never spoken to, though he remembers her as a committed lesbian and powerful personality from his undergraduate days at the University of New Hampshire.

A struggling non-fiction writer with an "overactive" imagination, Jacob habitually organizes his life with scheduled lists and makes precision straight-lined, square-cornered furniture to keep himself anchored. His wife's infidelity - totally unexpected - (it's actually somewhat difficult to square Jacob's idyllic memories with the calculating harpy the reader sees)leaves him shaky and bewildered and terrified of losing 9-year-old Max. Despite the restraining order barring him from his home, he touches base with Max, downplaying the upheaval in their lives and delivering the advice Jacob himself struggles to live by, "Your head, not your heart."

Then he takes out the card Alix has left him: "GREEN GIRLS, the business card read. EXOTIC GROWERS." The address is on the Portsmouth side of the Piscataqua, on the banks of the river, under the span of the bridge. A huge greenhouse is attached to the back of the house. The greenhouse nurtures a pungent, humid jungle of South American rainforest plants and small poisonous frogs. As Alix leads Jacob in, a dark, beautiful woman, radiating intense sexuality, appears from the greenhouse. Alix introduces July and explains that she helped Jacob because she admires his writing.

" `I do have to admit,' Alix went on, `even though there are never any people in his books, something about his writing is extremely sensual. The fire in Baltimore? The commotion in the next berth? I'm not sure if he treats violence sexually or sex violently.' She gave July a pointed look. `Either way, I know you'd appreciate it.' " Jacob's books, we learn, are about things, like the train berth he occupied on the way home from his mother's funeral. Or the I-95 bridge he now chooses as the center of his first novel.

The friction between Alix and July (hiding from an abusive, murderous husband) is palpable, and Jacob wants nothing to do with them. But after another visit with his son, he finds July waiting for him, agitated over a fight with Alix. Moments later his cell phone summons him to the big bridge from which Alix, after a short, cryptic exchange, jumps. Jake keeps saying he can't get involved, but it's too late. Alix's body is not recovered and July's Columbian shaman husband - the one who tried to kill her - has broken out of prison and is on his way.

The erotic tension runs high as the action heats up from all sides, entangling Jacob deeper in a web of deceit, suspicion, mysticism and murder. There's a strong James M. Cain feel to the edgy mix of steamy eroticism and dark double dealing in which Jacob's judgment is fatefully faulty and erratic and absolutely no one can be trusted - except Max.

Kimball ("Undone," "Mouth to Mouth") puts the bridge at the center of the story as an object of grace and beauty, magnificence and deadly danger, and invests it with a powerful character that is not in the least anthropomorphic. Though plot and atmosphere drive the book as much as character, Jacob draws the reader with his earnest grit and hapless inability to live by his mantra: "head not heart."

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Compelling!, February 18, 2003

By 

"business-owner" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Green Girls: A Novel of Suspense (Hardcover)

A friend who is a reviewer recommended "Green Girls" as a book that I might find interesting. I didn't think I would like it from reading the blurb, but I was wrong. This is a compelling read that held my attention throughout. The obsessive and quite mad July is a pretty unnerving character. I got a little tired of the protagonist making stupid mistakes, but he eventually tries to redeem himself. The Colombian shaman is a great character and Kimball did a great job with him. If you like books that are a little out there and not so "in the box" this is a good book for you.