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RELIC

An eccentric, grisly, thoroughly original thriller sure to please doctoral candidates and gore junkies alike. The real star featured by Preston (Jennie, p. 1080, etc.) and former St. Martin's editor Child isn't the brain-eating, evolutionary aberration, quaintly dubbed the ``Museum Beast,'' that hunts victims in the subterranean catacombs of New York's Museum of Natural History: It's the museum itself. While the creature is never dull, thrill hounds couldn't ask for a creepier environment in which to encounter grad student Margo Green, journalist Bill Smithback, FBI Special Agent Pendergast, and a mob of bureaucrats, genetics geeks, and NYPD cops. On the eve of a heavily promoted megashow, the shredded bodies of two boys are discovered in the museum's basement. As the death toll mounts, Agent Pendergast, attempts to postpone the opening of an exhibit called Superstition. But he's vetoed by a publicity-conscious superior. Meanwhile, Green and Smithback combine forces to get the lowdown on some mysterious crates from a failed Amazon expedition that no one wants to talk about. It turns out that the ``Museum Beast'' is really a freak of nature, its DNA half-reptile and half-primate. It followed the crates to New York because they contained the last samples of its only food—when the supply ran out, the monster began snacking on nutritionally similar human brains. Fast, smart, and almost bulletproof, the beast also served as the central figure in the rituals of a vanished Amazon culture. If this all sounds wildly cool, it's nothing compared to the novel's final third, in which several groups of characters (including the mayor) are trapped in different parts of the museum and must fend off repeated attacks from the lizard-ape, which munches on SWAT teams and socialites before squaring off against Green and Pendergast. A thriller staged in the world's scariest building, with no room for the squeamish.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-312-85630-X

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Forge

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1994

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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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MAGIC HOUR

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

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