Following the assassination of an American military attachÇ in the former USSR, the Pentagon sends Marcinko on a priority (Designation Gold) mission to Moscow with orders to investigate the brutal murder. A sometime Navy SEAL (whose real-life exploits in Vietnam were chronicled in the 1992 bestseller Rogue Warrior), Marcinko has had an active (if fictive) post-retirement career in which he offers caustic first-person accounts of dirty jobs done for low-profile agencies of the US government (Rogue Warrior: Task Force Blue, 1996, etc.). On this outing, the salty soldier of fortune raises enough homicidal hell with mafiya goons and corrupt officials to get himself expelled from Russia. Although scarcely more welcome in Washington's upper echelons, he has come away with evidence that minions of the Kremlin are smuggling nuclear material to Syria through Werner Lantos, a shady Hungarian middleman who works out of Paris. Joining forces with Avi Ben Gal (an old pal from Israel's security service), Tricky Dick heads for the City of Light, where he and his three-man team learn that the venal go-between is at the heart of a vast conspiracy to restore the erstwhile Soviet Union's superpower status and trigger a renewal of the Cold War. While well-placed traitors in their own governments resist them at every turn, Dick and Avi resourcefully manage to mount an airborne raid on a covert atomic-weapons installation near Damascus. In a climactic engagement notable for their unwonted reliance on guile as well as firepower, the two lay waste to the secret ordnance facility, bag the reptilian Lantos, and determine who should pay for the transnational plot's near-miss horrors. With sociopolitical asides (on Bill Clinton, equal employment opportunity in the armed forces, and allied targets of opportunity) as hard-hitting as the narrative action, the aging but perdurably macho man delivers another diverting road show. (Author tour)
Pub Date: March 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-671-89673-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1997
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
