Recommended both as a suspenseful story and a cautionary tale of yielding to temptation.
A habitual gambler recounts a life of bad decisions in sports books and corporate embezzlement, and the effect it had on his family.
No one’s saying Dennis Hart had it easy. A father at 17 with an unstable girlfriend and bills to pay, he shelved his nascent college career to begin life in the working world. There—facing dire straits that many of us have encountered at one time or another—Hart gave in to the first of many opportunities to bend the law and profit while doing so. From there, despite his lack of formal training, Hart was skilled enough as an accountant to land jobs in numerous financial departments at mid-sized companies. When he and two colleagues began their own precious-metals company (and Hart began a separate travel agency), he developed the means and the structure to begin cashing illegal checks to support his gambling habit. His sports bets—and the Hollywood-named hustlers who are on his tail—continue to multiply while he draws money from his companies and conceals the misdeeds on the balance sheet. As Hart juggles this downward-spiraling mélange of family, lawyers, hustlers and hit men, Hart’s readers will feel the stress once corporate managers finally notice the balance sheet irregularities. The inherent suspense throughout contrasts well with Hart’s candid and effortless writing style; he recounts every mistake from a refreshingly honest and self-effacing perspective. What may strike readers most is the ultimately tragic nature of Hart’s story. A handsome, intelligent, charismatic man, he seemed to have the world at his feet. But a series of bad decisions and weakened resistance to temptation sent him down a path that twisted toward lifelong infamy. In a moment of bleak anguish, Hart describes his future wife agreeing to a first date with him: “It would prove to be the worst decision she ever made.” In the end, perhaps Hart’s greatest victory is keeping his wife, his dream of Florida and his readers on his side.
Recommended both as a suspenseful story and a cautionary tale of yielding to temptation.Pub Date: Dec. 31, 2012
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 436
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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