Excellent amusement—Georgette Heyer for the gents.
A bothersome death sentence interrupts the adventures of dashing Georgian naval hero Alan Lewrie, but not for long. Action resumes in the Bay of Biscay.
Now a post-captain with a lovely new ship, Savage, freshly snatched from the French and newly rigged for action, Lewrie, in his 14th adventure (A King’s Trade, 2006, etc.), is itching to put to sea. What’s stopping him is a spot of legal trouble. Big trouble, actually. The Jamaican plantation owner whose slaves Lewrie liberated when he was last in the Caribbean has ramrodded a trial through the island courts and obtained a death sentence for Alan in absentia. Ludicrous as the charge may be (the slaves were unsurprisingly eager to liberate themselves) and rotten as the Jamaican court proceedings may have been, the islanders have legal rights in the British courts. Poor Alan is at the mercy of his sprightly young Scottish barrister, whose taste for expensive restaurants makes deep inroads into the Captain’s recently acquired fortune. To complicate matters, Sophie, Alan’s delectable ward, is about to be wed to one of Lewrie’s former First Officers, another exceptionally costly event. And his American wife Caroline has been receiving detailed anonymous letters about Alan’s indiscretions, to which she gives credence. What a relief, then, to get through the trial (verdict to be announced much later) and the wedding (great event, but Caroline is not mollified) and sail off to the French Atlantic coast where His Majesty’s navy has sealed up the ports and throttled most of the commerce. Happy to find that he has increased authority and a handful of other ships to get adventurous with, Captain Lewrie takes a look at the vulnerabilities of Bonaparte’s local seaports and stretches what could have been a soporific assignment into a splendid dustup. All this is told in Lambdin’s usual mannered but amusing version of Regency English, which slows the pace, but not disagreeably.
Excellent amusement—Georgette Heyer for the gents.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-34805-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
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
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