Good nasty fun in the form of a plausible (if not altogether credible) plot offering object lessons on the wages of sin,...
Another elegant entertainment from Thomas (Hanover Place, 1990, etc.), a former Lehman Brothers partner with a firm grasp of high finance and the low cunning that frequently informs it.
Lee Boynton is a brainy, zaftig, 30ish heiress, copublisher and sole angel of Washington-based Capitol Steps, a muckraking review with a small but influential readership. When she gets a tip on some odd megabuck cash flows through a troubled bank in Northern California, she recruits Thurlow Coole, an austere Bostonian with a Wall Street background, to help her pursue the story. The unlikely pair quickly realize they're on the twisty trail of a criminal enterprise established mainly to legitimize Colombian drug lords' money, flight capital from underdeveloped countries, terrorists' slush funds, and the illicit profits of putatively respectable corporations. At the heart of the vast conspiracy is Credit Provencal, a BCCI-like institution effectively controlled by Mona Kurchinsky, a whip-smart operator who was a valued protégé of Lee's legendary uncle in the CIA. Mona's minions include a White House insider and a murderous Korean-American who has tapped into JEDI (Joint Expedited Date Interface), the US government's ultrasecure clearinghouse system for its law-enforcement agencies. As the transnational laundry's dirty linen comes spilling out in the wash of Lee's globe-trotting inquiries and Coole's shrewd analyses of what's been going down in the presumptive privacy of computer networks, the villains of the piece begin covering their tracks the old-fashioned way—by killing off those who know too much. At the close, Lee has written a bestseller about how CP was brought to book and looks forward to deepening her lusty relationship with an unexpectedly studly Coole.
Good nasty fun in the form of a plausible (if not altogether credible) plot offering object lessons on the wages of sin, laced with liberal measures of the author's trademark commentary on tempora et mores.Pub Date: June 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-517-59523-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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