Fans of Fraser know what they’re in for—and they’ll have a grand romp.
The rowdy, bawdy adventures of a charming cad, adept with both heart-slicing blade and heart-melting words.
British author Fraser (1925–2008), the phenomenally popular creator of Harry Flashman (Flashman on the March, 2005, etc.), really has only one character in his armory, the rogue whom men admire and women faint over, even as they recognize that he’s the sort mummy warned them against. In this instance, the rogue in question is a light-fingered reaver, a sort of junior highwayman out on the frontier of Scotland and England, who finds his merry days complicated by regicidal conspiracy, the grand larceny of glimmering jewels and a rather luscious gentlewoman named, lest the point be missed, Lady Godiva. Hijinks, japes, jests and jousts ensue. The specifics are beside the point, for a Fraser novel is an excuse to indulge in goofery. This book, as the narrator says, presents “an all-star cast of steely-eyed heroes, noble ladies, unspeakable villains, gorgeous wantons, corrupt creeps, maniacs, freebooters, freeloaders, and hordes of colourful extras, in a variety of Great Locations.” He left out the Spanish torturers, twisting their waxed mustachios in evil glee, and a few discards from the cast of Braveheart, but Fraser’s catalog about covers it. As if this were all not enough, this, like any Fraser novel, is a battlefield littered with dead puns (of two hanged cows, for instance, “ye couldnae tell one frae the udder”), obvious names (“the reigning Scottish Traitor of the Year, Lord Anguish”) and tattered bodices (“where petrified soldiery had stood, there were now forty voluptuous dancing girls in gauzy trousers and flimsy veils, undulating in beauteous bewilderment”).
Fans of Fraser know what they’re in for—and they’ll have a grand romp.Pub Date: April 24, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-307-26810-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2008
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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