Showing 11 - 20 of 171 annotations tagged with the keyword "Homicide"

Annotated by:
Duffin, Jacalyn

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel

Summary:

A murder mystery set in Harlem of the 1930s. The Conjure-Man, Frimbo, is a reclusive, highly educated soothsayer and fortune teller born in Africa. His Harlem dwelling is a popular destination for local people seeking direction for the decisions that they confront. He takes pains to conceal much about his identity.

One evening, Frimbo is found dead by a client, while a handful of people occupy his waiting room. Doctor Archer, who lives across the street, is summoned to pronounce the death, and the police come soon, led by detective Dart. Then the corpse disappears, and the Conjure-Man reappears alive to the amazement of all.

The investigators use recent technology, including blood typing, to establish that the corpse was not that of the Conjure-Man. Over just a few days, the doctor and the detective work their way through all the possible scenarios to establish the identity and motive of the killer. The ending is surprising.

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Joji

Pothan, Dileesh

Last Updated: Jun-13-2021
Annotated by:
Teagarden, J. Russell

Primary Category: Performing Arts / Film, TV, Video

Genre: Film

Summary:

“Grandpa is in quarantine,” Popy tells the delivery man through his face mask in the opening scene. His grandfather was not in quarantine; Popy had ordered an air gun using his account and now needed to conceal it from him. But, because the movie is set during the Covid-19 pandemic, the delivery man could easily believe Popy’s story and hands over the package with the gun.  

Popy is a teenager living in a multigenerational household in India, which in addition to his grandfather, Kuttappan PK Panachel, includes his father, Jomon, two uncles, Jaison and Joji, and Jaison’s wife, Bincy. They live on a sprawling and prosperous plantation Kuttappan owns near Kerala. Imperious and parsimonious, Kuttappan keeps tight control over his domain and family. As the movie begins, we see cracks forming in the family from the continuous pressure he exerts. The pressure affects Joji most.

Though he dropped out of an engineering college, Joji seeks wealth and independence, but his attempts to attain riches yield little until Kuttappan suffers a stroke. From the time of his father’s struggle for survival until his death, Joji plots to hasten his father’s demise and secure the family fortune for himself. Lives are lost, and so are Joji’s aspirations. 

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Annotated by:
Brinker, Dustin

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Graphic Novel

Summary:

Compendium 1 (Volumes 1-8)
Taking place in a post-apocalyptic United States, these graphic novels follow the life and legacy of a former county police officer named Rick Grimes as he and those he encounters learn to survive and thrive in a world beset by zombies. The story begins in medias res as Rick awakens from a coma after being shot on the job a few weeks earlier. He finds himself in a seemingly deserted hospital and stumbles upon a sealed room, inside which walks dozens of decaying, groaning human bodies seeking to consume him. He flees the hospital to find a desolate landscape. In his home neighborhood, he runs into a father and son who tell him that the last national broadcast said for people to head to large cities for military protection. Thinking that his wife and son may have heeded the advice, Rick gathers what he can from police headquarters and begins toward Atlanta, the nearest large city. Galloping into Atlanta on horseback, he is overwhelmed by a large number of the undead. A young man named Glenn comes to his rescue, bringing him to a makeshift camp of roughly a dozen people. There, Rick finds his wife and 7-year-old son Carl along with his former police partner and a young woman named Andrea. Mishaps and death ensue, forcing the group to travel in search of more secure housing and food. It is revealed that everyone will become one of the undead upon death, bitten or not.  They eventually find a prison after leaving behind a small farm run by a tightknit, religious family with skewed notions of the undead, one member of which, Maggie, becomes romantically involved with Glenn and joins Rick’s group. After ridding the grounds of the undead, termed Roamers, the group encounters inmates who had been holed up inside. Conflict follows distrust, yet the leadership remains with Rick’s group. The group’s numbers are bolstered when a middle-aged black woman named Michonne arrives carrying a katana and accompanied by two jawless, undead guards. Soon after, the group encounters Woodbury, a hostile community led by a man calling himself the Governor. Members are taken hostage, and Michonne is brutally tortured and raped. The group manages to escape and return to the prison, but only after Michonne returns to claim revenge on the Governor, torturing, maiming, and leaving him for dead. The Governor survives and leads an assault on the prison, resulting in the separation of most characters and the deaths of many others, including Rick’s wife and their recently delivered baby. Only Rick and Carl are shown leaving the carnage alive.  

Compendium 2 (Volumes 9-16)
Rick and Carl survive on their own for a bit until they encounter three individuals in a large truck heading to Washington D.C. They are under the false assumption that one of the new group’s members, Eugene, knows how to cure the undead pandemic. Shortly after discovering his falsehood, the group is introduced to and integrated into a walled community near DC known as Alexandria, a haven of houses, electricity, and running water. Battles arise with scavengers, resulting in compromised walls, injury, and more death. While searching for supplies, the group encounters a man dubbed Jesus who is acting as a recruiter for another walled off community called the Hilltop. Rick ventures to the Hilltop with the hopes of rebuilding civilization, only to learn that their community is plagued by a pseudo-mercenary group known as the Saviors; “protection” from Roamers is forced upon the Hilltop by the Saviors in exchange for half of all food and supplies. To free the Hilltop and gain favor for trade, Rick agrees to challenge and eliminate the Saviors along with their leader Negan.

Compendium 3 (Volumes 17-24)
Upon confrontation, the Saviors pin Rick’s vanguard, and Negan savagely kills Glenn in front of a pregnant Maggie, using a barbed-wire-wrapped baseball bat named Lucille to do so. Negan forces obeisance from Rick, albeit under a vow from Rick to kill him. Returning to Alexandria, Rick’s group returns to normalcy, appearing to acquiesce to the demands of Negan. Unbeknownst to most of those under his care, Rick embarks with Jesus to enlist the leader of another community known as the Kingdom in an allied war effort against Negan and the Saviors. Rick’s arrival coincides with that of Negan’s lieutenant Dwight who also seeks to overthrow Negan. The four of them begin war preparations. Despite misfortunes, the allied group comes out victorious. Rather than kill Negan, Rick vows to keep him prisoner for life so that he may see how the communities rebuild civilization. The following new leadership is established: Rick and Andrea, now romantically involved, as the heads of Alexandria; Dwight as commander of the Saviors and their community, the Sanctuary; and Maggie as the chief of the Hilltop. The four communities effectively rebuild a functional society in the next two years, establishing a safe trade route and taking in stragglers as they find them. Eventually the communities face a new danger in the form of a wild group called the Whisperers, who disguise themselves in the skins of Roamers and follow a wolfpack social hierarchy, when they accidentally encroach on the unmarked territory of the latter. The leader of this group, known as Alpha, infiltrates the first community fair held by Rick’s people, covertly snatches away many members, and uses their undead heads as signposts to mark the boundary between territories.

Compendium 4 (Volumes 25-32)
In the shuffle of Rick and his communities declaring war on the Whisperers, Negan jailbreaks and manages to kill Alpha as a sign of good faith with Rick. The established communities survive the war, suffering enormous casualties in the elimination of the Whisperers. Meanwhile, Eugene discovers the existence of another large community in Ohio using a repaired CB radio. A team, including Eugene and Michonne, gathers for the long journey there. The results are beyond reasoning: an incredibly large community dubbed the Commonwealth. This community gives the appearance that an apocalypse never occurred, relying upon the class system of the old, pre-undead world to establish order. Amazingly, Michonne reconnects with one of her long-lost daughters and chooses to remain in the Commonwealth by resuming her old vocation as a lawyer. She attempts to mitigate underlying tensions between the classes of this newfound community, but ultimately fails to quell the waves of indignation and retribution from the labor classes towards their privileged elite. Rick and his crew inadvertently add the final spark to the brewing civil war within the Commonwealth, a war which is only narrowly stopped through Rick’s diplomacy and abdication of leadership from current governor. Despite the now solidified union of a new civilization, Rick is murdered by the self-righteous son of the deposed leader, never living to see the fruition of the new coalition. The story ends from the perspective of Carl living in a civilized, nearly undead-free world decades after Rick’s death. The final events reveal the glorification of Rick Grimes and his contributions during what is now known as the Trials.  

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Man's 4th Best Hospital

Shem, Samuel

Last Updated: Feb-28-2020
Annotated by:
Miksanek, Tony

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel

Summary:

Most of the group are reunited in this sequel to the 1978 blockbuster, The House of God: narrator Dr. Roy Basch and his girlfriend (now wife) Berry, former fellow interns (Eat My Dust Eddie, Hyper Hooper, the Runt, Chuck), surgeon Gath, the two articulate police officers (Gilheeny and Quick), and the Fat Man (a brilliant, larger-than-life former teaching resident). As interns, Basch and his comrades were a crazy, exhausted, cynical crew just trying to survive their brutal internship. Years later, the midlife doctors have changed but remain emotionally scarred.

The Fat Man (“Fats”), now a wealthy California internist who is beginning a biotech company targeting memory restoration, is recruited to reestablish the fortunes – financial and prestige – of Man’s Best Hospital which has slipped to 4th place in the annual hospital rankings. He calls on his former protégés to assist him in an honorable mission, “To put the human back in health care” (p34). Fats enlists other physicians (Drs. Naidoo and Humbo) along with a promising medical student (Mo Ahern) to staff his new Future of Medicine Clinic (FMC), an oasis of empathic medical care that strives to be with the patient.

Every great story needs a villain. Here the main bad guys are hospital president Jared Krashinsky, evil senior resident Jack Rowk Junior, and CEO of the BUDDIES hospital conglomerate Pat Flambeau. The electronic medical records system dubbed HEAL is a major antagonist, and the FMC docs wage war against it and the “screens.”

Poor Roy Basch works long hours, deals with family problems, has trouble paying bills, and experiences health issues (a bout of atrial fibrillation, a grand mal seizure, and alcohol use). Fats has warned of a “tipping point when medical care could go one way or another, either toward humane care or toward money and screens” (p8). Alas, the computers and cash appear victorious. A major character is killed. Many of the doctors working in the FMC including Basch leave the clinic. And fittingly, Man’s Best Hospital plummets in the latest rankings from 4th to 19th place.

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Code Blues

Yuan-Innes, Melissa; Yi, Melissa

Last Updated: Dec-10-2018
Annotated by:
Duffin, Jacalyn

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel

Summary:

Hope Sze is a resident in family medicine aiming to qualify for the extra year in emergency medicine training. She has just moved from her medical school in London, Ontario, to begin residency in St. Joseph’s Hospital, Montreal. Her furniture and clothing have not yet arrived.

On orientation day, she meets her resident colleagues and takes a shine to Alex who clearly likes her too. But the excitement and anticipation of this new chapter in their lives is disrupted when the body of one of the attending physicians is found lying in the locker room. 

A “whodunnit” with medicine, romance, and suspense in which Hope makes a few mistakes but manages to identify the murderer and the motives.

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Sky the Oar

Nigliazzo, Stacy

Last Updated: Oct-16-2018
Annotated by:
Davis, Cortney

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Collection (Poems)

Summary:

"Sky the Oar," Stacy Nigliazzo's second full-length poetry collection, contains 52 poems in four sections. These poems are gems--and gem-like, each poem has been created by a compression of words into unique forms.  Nigliazzo's poems wander along the page, floating in white space as margins move in and out. In the three "Triptych" poems, pages 36, 46, and 61, Nigliazzo uses an article written in 2015, the report of a woman's murder, as a pale background. By choosing words to highlight, the poet creates spare poems that emerge as commentary on this crime--"Triptych III" offers only 6 highlighted words (pages 61-62). Nigliazzo has abandoned the more common narrative form--long or short lines that tell a story--and instead gives the reader hints, sign posts along the way. These poems are not meant to be read quickly. It is only by pondering them, allowing the imagination and intellect to fill in, so to speak, the white space around the words, that the impact and complexity of these stunning, impressionistic poems becomes evident. 

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Annotated by:
Duffin, Jacalyn

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel

Summary:

In 1869 in the remote northern Scottish village of Culduie, teenager Roderick (Roddy) Macrae brutally murders his neighbor, Lachlan “Broad’ Mackenzie, and two others. He readily admits to his crime, motivated, he says, by a desire to end the dreadful vendetta that Broad waged against his widowed father. The sympathetic defence lawyer, Andrew Simpson, urges him to write an account of the events leading up to the tragedy.  

Roddy agrees. In a surprisingly articulate essay, the young crofter describes his motive, originating with his birth and escalating through the lad’s mercy killing of an injured sheep belonging to Broad (interpreted as wanton), Broad’s sexual torment of his sister and mother, and his abuse of power as a constable that strips the family of land, crops, and finally their home.  

Given Roddy’s passivity, intelligence, and previously clean record, Simpson prepares a defence of temporary insanity and brings two physicians to assess his client, one a purported expert in the new field of medical criminology.  
 

The jury trial proceeds with an almost verbatim transcript derived from newspaper sources. The reader is able to juxtapose Roderick’s account with that presented in court. To report the outcome here would reveal too much.

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Sutton's Law

Wright, Linda; Orient, Jane

Last Updated: Jan-05-2018
Annotated by:
Duffin, Jacalyn

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel

Summary:

Intern, Maggie Altman, begins her postgraduate training in a large Texas hospital where a new computerized system has been implemented to improve service. She pours heart and soul into her work, but her admissions always seem to be the sickest patients who keep dying, sometimes inexplicably. Maggie becomes suspicious of her colleagues and of Dr. Milton Silber, an irrascible, retired clinician with no fondness for the new technology. Silber also happens to be a financial genius. Overhearing conversations and finding puzzling papers, Maggie imagines a scam, in which her supervisors may be eliminating dying patients to reduce costs, improve statistics, and siphon funds to their own pockets.

The bad outcomes for Maggie's patients are noticed and criticized, and she is pressured to drop out, switch hospitals, or go back into research. She senses that the perpetrators are aware of her suspicions and send her the worst patients in an effort to eliminate her. She trusts no one. These worries are compounded by her own illness and her accidental discovery in the morgue of a traffic in unclaimed bodies. With the help of excellent clinical skills, true friends, Dr. Silber, and a new love interest who is a budding financial genius, she survives physical and emotional violence and solves the mystery of patient homicides, poisonings, and fraud.

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The Anatomist's Apprentice

Harris, Tessa

Last Updated: Jan-05-2018
Annotated by:
Duffin, Jacalyn

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel

Summary:

In 1780, Thomas Silkstone, a young American surgeon and anatomist, is invited by Lydia to establish the cause of death of her brother, Lord Crick, a dissolute who held the Oxfordshire estate that she will inherit. Her goal is to absolve her husband of the suspicion of murder; however, as the investigation proceeds, it increasingly seems that her husband is guilty after all.

 The earnest young doctor methodically examines each new lead—performing experiments on tissues and with various poisons in his effort to determine the cause of death – and in so doing solve a murder. Before long, another person is dead and Thomas is in love with Lydia, a scarcely concealed complication that calls his testimony into question.

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Ordinary Grace

Krueger, William

Last Updated: Aug-02-2016
Annotated by:
McEntyre, Marilyn

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction — Secondary Category: Literature /

Genre: Novel

Summary:

Frank Drum, 13, and his younger brother Jake are catapulted into adulthood the summer of 1961 in their small Minnesota town as they become involved in investigation of a series of violent deaths.  Their father, a Methodist minister, and their mother, a singer and musician, can’t protect them from knowing more than children perhaps should know about suicide, mental illness, and unprovoked violence.  The story is Frank’s retrospective, 40 years later, on that summer and its lasting impact on their family, including what he and his brother learned about the complicated ways people are driven to violence and the equally complicated range of ways people respond to violence and loss—grief, anger, depression, and sometimes slow and discerning forgiveness.  

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