Formidable bad guys help retain steady, nail-biting tension for the good guys and for readers.
In Ginsberg’s debut thriller, a private detective and a widow become targets of London thugs when looking into the presumed murder of the woman’s husband.
Susan Valentine doesn’t believe her husband Robert’s death was the result of a car accident. She’s sure someone killed the Wall Street trader, who’d been questioning huge withdrawals from a series of accounts at his firm. She hires Jerry Green, who specializes in financial crimes but takes the case since he and Robert were friends. Jerry suspects that murderers with resources for such a coverup must have a lot of power. And he’s right: Oliver Millhouse and Russell Enderley are English businessmen running a weapons-smuggling scheme. They have a knack for killing off anyone nosing around their operation, and Jerry, along with people close to him, may be next on their list. Ginsberg’s novel churns out a hefty amount of suspense by first introducing Millhouse, who recruits pilot Scottie Simons with intimidation and a bit of torture courtesy of his henchmen. Jerry is wisely cautious from the beginning of the case, using an alias and hiding behind a wig and glasses when, for example, enlisting a hacker to help. He’s understandably nervous that the baddies may be able to connect him to anyone he knows, including his employees, paralegal Daisy and receptionist Marie. The title is a little misleading: Jerry, who’s indisputably the protagonist, is driven by his own vengeance just as much as Susan’s, and he eventually wants to stop Millhouse and Enderley because of their apparent intent to harm Jerry’s female pals. Ginsberg keeps the technology aspect at a minimum, but he does show how difficult it is to stay offline. Marie, for instance, who’s hiding with Daisy, simply powers up her Kindle (to combat boredom), which could lead armed villains right to them. The author ups the ante in the latter half by moving the Manhattan detective to London to team up with Scotland Yard. He likewise implies Jerry’s attraction to the widow Valentine, a potentially interesting subplot that unfortunately never takes off.
Formidable bad guys help retain steady, nail-biting tension for the good guys and for readers.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5152-1963-7
Page Count: 300
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 4, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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