A sometimes-engaging horror tale, hampered by an undercooked plot.
A creepy aristocrat who recently arrived in town turns out to be a hungry vampire on the prowl in this debut horror yarn set in an unspecified Latin-American country.
A scary old estate called Isthamal hasn’t seen much activity in quite a long while. So when a silver-maned gentleman with mysterious Spanish roots suddenly takes up residence within its desolate walls, a watchful architect down the road named Rolando takes notice. It soon becomes clear that the new arrival is a vampire, or at the very least a very unsavory eccentric. Despite this, Rolando leaps at the chance to work with “The Count” on a promising new business venture. But soon, the architect’s wife, Sonia, starts having horrible nightmares about The Count, and a small band of impromptu vampire hunters, led by a student of the dark arts named Cosima, lops off her head, believing the beastly Count has transformed her into a vampire. D’Tejada is a talented writer with a facile prose style (“the artist had captured a look in which she could detect a mixture of cruelty and arrogance”). However, the characters in his underdeveloped universe curiously regard vampirism as an alien concept that requires the services of occult experts to understand. For example, horribly withered corpses, drained of blood and displaying telltale puncture marks on their necks, soon start popping up, which spurs local law enforcement into action—but these sheltered constables, as well as Cosima’s crew, seem oblivious to the obvious supernatural signs. Soon, the noose quickly begins to close around the distinctly coiffed Count’s neck when the cops call in the services of a police sketch artist. But will they catch The Count? An anticlimactic, ambiguous ending (“The End Or The Beginning Of A Tale Of The Vampire”) seems like an overeager, rather than ominous, declaration of things to come.
A sometimes-engaging horror tale, hampered by an undercooked plot.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-1482676204
Page Count: 156
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 25, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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