More anecdotal than novelistic, it’s too slight to rank with his best, but the Estleman hallmark has always been the quality...
Rowdy Roy Bean, lovely Lillie Langtry—a fine romance with no kisses.
In calling himself “the Law West of the Pecos,” Roy Bean may have overstated but not by much. It was an anarchic time, those last decades of the 19th century, a time when the law was endlessly malleable, pressed into disparate shapes by Colts, Winchesters and idiosyncratic judges. Bean, saloon keeper extraordinaire and oft-elected Justice of the Peace in Val Verde County, was the very model of a Texas-style “hanging judge,” though probably not quite as lethal as legend purports. He did, however, own a huge, old, only partially domesticated bear named Bruno, employed from time to time—in one bizarre way or another—to implement his unorthodox approach to sentencing. Judge Bean was inordinately famous. Three thousand miles away, in England, so was Lillie Langtry. Born Emilie LeBreton on the pastoral British island of Jersey, she became with breathtaking speed the gorgeous “Jersey Lily,” toast of multiple towns on both sides of the Atlantic. She was an actress, and though never in a class with contemporaries Ellen Terry and Sarah Bernhardt when talent was the measure, her looks compensated, made her for years “an attraction as dependable as the crown jewels.” Judge Bean was besotted with her, wrote passionately to her, papered the walls of his establishment with her photographs, named a town after her and longed for the day she would visit him there. Still, is it in fact a love story? Though they never met, Estleman makes a case.
More anecdotal than novelistic, it’s too slight to rank with his best, but the Estleman hallmark has always been the quality of the prose. After 60 or so books (Alone, 2009, etc.) that remains fresh, flavorful and worth the price.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-7653-2228-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2010
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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