Spookers are the rainy-day funds that intelligence agents amass against the time when they must decampwhereon hangs a flimsy tale from Ing (Butcher Bird, 1993, etc.). Although slow on the uptake, the CIA eventually realizes that ever since the late '60s freelance mercenaries have been offing undercover operatives (foreign as well as domestic) for their getaway money. The first victim seems to have been Skander Roman Masaryk, a Czech engineer raised in Canada during WW II, who was kidnapped and presumably beaten to death in 1968. The disappearances continue, but leads are in short supply and the case file builds until 1993, when investigators catch a much-needed break. At that time, the anonymous assassins go after Gary Landis, a Fresno-based DEA man. Panicked by a cryptic note and a hail of bullets, Landis bolts—but before he can clear his garage, he's grabbed, drugged, and left for dead at the bottom of a mine shaft with two other bodies. By some unexplained miracle, the young fed doesn't succumb and starts tracking his would-be killers. It soon becomes clear that another survivor, the not-dead defector Masaryk (in fact, a gender-jumbled freak able to live as a woman), and Andrew Soriano, his/her adoptive son, are the culprits. From the privileged sanctuary of a high-tech residential complex on the Yomo Indian reservation, this strange pair has been preying on targets of opportunity in the West Coast's intelligence community for over two decades. As Landis stalks the erstwhile hunters, they reveal themselves to be exceptionally nasty pieces of work. Soriano, for example, performs unspeakable acts upon the bodies of small furry animals, finally does in his domineering mom (Masaryk), and engineers a climactically degrading confrontation with Landis that ends badly for all hands. A second-rate thriller with little pace or suspense, albeit an abundance of loose ends and shock-value details.
Pub Date: Nov. 27, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-85740-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1995
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
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