A concise but considerable thriller, and a fine companion piece to the author’s similarly themed debut.
A former news anchor and a college professor find themselves on the run from a lethal U.S. agency in the second political thriller from Fischer (The Blood of Tyrants, 2009).
Law professor Ken Bannister comes into possession of a cassette tape of the White House Chief of Staff implicating the administration in a murder plot. Believing he’s in danger, he calls his old friend Brian Everett, who was once a TV news reporter and wrote a San Francisco Chronicle article criticizing the president’s response to a protest. They soon realize that terrorist assaults around the country may be domestically orchestrated. Both men catch the attention of the Federal Security Force, which treats any unfavorable actions or words against the government as high treason. At its core, Fischer’s novel is dystopian: The government owns all the TV networks, and, as the FSF pursues the two men, the president implements a 72-hour Internet shutdown. Everett laments that all George Orwell “got wrong was the exact year” in 1984. But Fischer’s setting is not a post-apocalyptic or near-future world—it’s modern-day. Many readers will relate to the fears at play: the threat of martial law, a crumbling economy and the idea that a foreign threat has been manufactured. There’s a hefty amount of action, as well, as Bannister and Everett race to the Canadian border to find a man who’s broadcasting anti-government messages. Meanwhile, the FSF and the Department of Homeland Security try to freeze others out of an investigation of passenger-train bombings and push the CIA and FBI into becoming allies, creating a civil war, of sorts, among U.S. agencies. The technology does seem a bit dated—for example, a “sophisticated recording system” uses cassette tapes, and no one thinks to make a digital copy—but it doesn’t diminishes the story or its rock-solid ending.
A concise but considerable thriller, and a fine companion piece to the author’s similarly themed debut.Pub Date: June 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0615368382
Page Count: 314
Publisher: The Grove Point Press
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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