All credit to Adams (Irony in the Soul, 2013, etc.) for his fertile imagination but not for knowing when his muddle of...
A third adventure for an aging cockney copper and his colorful colleagues.
DCI Jack “Jane” Austin—member of the Church of Egypt (De-Nile), dispenser of nicknames, cheerful mangler of the English language—was shot and nearly killed two months ago in breaking up a pedophile ring. Even more recently, he’s survived an explosion while he was wearing a tutu in the streets of Portsmouth. Now he thinks he’s dying again, although his lover and boss, DS Amanda Bruce, assures him he’s merely hung over. Nor is he much of an Adonis: he lost an eye and was badly scarred in the line of duty years back, and he has love handles and varicose veins. He’s nearly 60 and a widower; Amanda’s 54 and a single mother; but they’re as randy as teenagers around each other. Even though Jack has stepped down from Community Policing, which he established and which is really a front for MI5, he’s back in the field, despite suffering from PTSD. He’s too valuable to MI5, especially since he recently reeled in the criminal Lionel Thacker—aka Len, Lionel Thackeray, or Norafarty for Moriarty—as an informant. When Jack and a beautiful young DC with shady family connections and a curious bond with Jack investigate the rumors of a dead dog or dogs thrown into the harbor, Jack is shot again. Then the head of the British Armed Forces is found dead and a prominent banker is murdered. Moreover, a star chamber for very senior retired military officers appears to have an even more select and shadowy group operating above it. Jack has a good idea why and why he has to leave the womenfolk behind for a final showdown with the forces of power and greed—even though he’s Portsmouth’s worst shot.
All credit to Adams (Irony in the Soul, 2013, etc.) for his fertile imagination but not for knowing when his muddle of bathroom jokes, sentimentality, slap and tickle, violence, and Jane Austen quotations gets tiresome.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-909273-96-2
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Urbane Publications/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
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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