It’s a pity Alfred Hitchcock isn’t around to direct the inevitable film version of this witty and intricate intercontinental thriller from the acclaimed historian (Maximum City: The Biography of New York, 1993) and fiction writer (The Drowning Room, 1996, etc.). Pye’s dazzling story begins with a clipped, brusque present-tense narration of the life and crimes of Martin Arkenhout, a 17-year-old Dutch student in the US who assumes the identity of an American boy he meets while traveling through Florida, after the latter is critically wounded by a hit-and-run driver and Martin phlegmatically finishes the job. Then, having discovered the advantages of being able to shed his identity at will, he continues to “take lives,” murdering, then “becoming” one acquaintance after another, until at last slipping into the skin and personal history of art teacher Christopher Hart: a “Seventeenth-century specialist, Dutch interests. A man trying to get noticed in the shadow of Simon Schama.” This newest life takes Arkenhout to Amsterdam, where he’s sighted by his mother (who informs the police), then to Portugal, where he’s tracked down and eventually confronted by John Michael Snell Costa, a Portugese-American “museum functionary” assigned to investigate Hart’s presumed theft of some invaluable illustrated manuscript pages. As Costa’s pursuit of “Hart” proceeds (the former having become, in one of the most dexterous twists here, the narrator), Pye skillfully expands the action to include a further investigation: into the reasons behind Costa päre’s return to his homeland, and the question of whether he had been an enemy of postwar dictator Salazar, or, instead, a member of Portugal’s notorious secret police. The pursuer becomes the quarry, and a climactic meeting with Arkenhout’s mother chillingly unlocks the key to her son’s opaque amorality. Tough as nails, and superbly constructed, with a lingering bitter aftertaste. This is about as good as literary thrillers get. (First printing of 50,000)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-375-40260-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
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
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