A short but often appealing thriller.
In Altman's debut novel, an ordinary doctor fights the Russian mob in Paris in order to save his kidnapped lover.
Forty-seven-year-old American urologist Barry Halpern has begun a new stage in his life. After ending his marriage to his cheating wife, he starts playing the field. In November 1984, a trip to a urologic meeting in Paris brings him to the bar of the InterContinental Hotel, where he meets French widow Monique Girard. He learns that her husband was employed by the Renseignements Généraux, the French equivalent of the CIA. Although Monique speaks little English, the instant, mutual attraction between her and Barry needs no translation. Later, he meets 16-year-old Luisa, Monique's daughter. After several more trips to see Monique in France, Barry's ready to make plans for her and Luisa to join him in New Jersey. But when he goes to Paris, he finds that Monique and Luisa have disappeared. He returns to the United States only to learn from RG officer Pierre Manteau that Luisa is dead and Monique has been kidnapped by the Russian mob who killed her husband. Barry decides that the only way he can help Monique is by going to Paris to investigate her disappearance himself. He quickly receives threats telling him to go home and is even stabbed in a hotel lobby. After he illegally obtains a gun, he joins Pierre, other RG officers and gendarmes to try to find Monique and take the mob down. Altman effectively shows how Barry's machismo and surgeon's quick reflexes come in handy when he's caught in gunfights. Barry is a likable character although he comes off as a bit crude at times ("My lust for sex had been beaten out of me"). The story is told from Barry's first-person point of view, but it might have benefited from other perspectives, such as Monique's as she withstands her captor's cruel treatment. Overall, Altman offers a propulsive, engaging narrative, particularly during Barry's search for Monique. Eventually, Barry exacts brutal retaliation as only an urologist would in a strange, gruesome twist.
A short but often appealing thriller.Pub Date: Dec. 16, 2013
ISBN: 978-1491718001
Page Count: 196
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2014
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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