A caper novel for fans of country music legend Rogers.
The country star extends his brand by collaborating on a book that shows how to hold ’em and know when to fold 'em.
Someone who loves country music from the 1970s and '80s, Texas Hold 'em and Texas in general could probably guess what’s in this novel before reading it. Credited to Rogers (Luck or Something Like It, 2012) and regional novelist Blakely (Come Sundown, 2006, etc.), the plot involves a country singer who shares some biographical particulars with Rogers (earlier rock success before a big country breakthrough, Houston-area roots, an insider’s knowledge of Nashville and the music business, and a big hit about gambling) and puts him in the middle of all sorts of complications that involve gambling, a scheme to con a con man, a television pilot, an international betting ring, the FBI and CIA, a heart transplant, a loving mama and romantic intrigue with a beautiful woman who becomes his manager. How beautiful? “You’re drop-dead gorgeous, Dorothy! The cameras would feast on you like a lion on a Watusi!” And “you make Sophia Loren look like a second runner-up in a plain Jane pageant.” And “Brigitte Bardot would kill Raquel Welch for your looks.” Yet the plotting manages to withstand all the chicken-fried clichés, as the stakes continue to escalate beyond anything the reader and most of the characters had anticipated. As the protagonist prepares to launch his country career by appearing as featured entertainment on a televised poker tournament that hopscotches across Texas, the gambling pits seasoned professionals and ringers against amateurs who “looked as if they couldn’t tell an ace in the hole from a hole in the ground.” After a stop in San Antonio includes the obligatory visit to the Alamo (“That there is hallowed ground”), the novel reaches its climax with perhaps the wildest night ever experienced at Gilley’s, once the ultimate Texas honky-tonk. It’s pretty easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys and to guess who will win.
A caper novel for fans of country music legend Rogers.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7653-2385-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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