From Mikulski, US senator from Maryland (Democrat), and Oates (Making Peace, 1991), a feeble attempt at a Washington suspense novel that reads like a hand-me-down episode of Murder, She Wrote. Digression and useless detail are the maladies of most bad thrillers, and this has both in spades. Eleanor ``Norie'' Gorzack is picked by the governor of Pennsylvania to replace a suddenly deceased US senator. A rank amateur in the ways of the the arcane and patrician (read: rich, white, male) Senate, Gorzack finds herself immediately in hot water. A Vietnam MIA expert who lost her husband in the war, Gorzack, with a tyro's aplomb, lobbies to be selected for the MIA subcommittee only to run afoul of the committee chairman, a velvety southerner. Meanwhile, a Vietnam vet is murdered, dying in her arms and clutching a clipping of an MIA article; the spectacle draws further unwanted attention from a lanky Capitol Hill cop, Lt. Thomas Carver. When one of Gorzack's young staffers is murdered, Carver begins to suspect that someone interested in covering up MIA issues is trying to send Gorzack a brutal message. The senator, however, never says die; working her way through a maze of conflicting Washington loyalties, she conducts her own shadow investigation. Fund- raisers, lobbyists, evangelists, MIA activists, and her colleagues all vie for Gorzack's attention—and supply her with clues. A trip to Vietnam as part of a Congressional MIA delegation produces epiphanies, but Gorzack remains dogged in her pursuit of the killer. A series of threats, anonymous letters, and poisoned gifts leads to an education in the depths of American political corruption. Enough juicy insider dish to keep things peripherally lively, but the book's basics- plot, character, and pacing—leave much to be desired. Ultimately, everything rides on the plucky Gorzack, and the senator's shoulders aren't wide enough for the load.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-525-94214-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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