Rebounding from last year's lackluster foray into Queens (Forced Entry), Stanley Moodrow returns to his colorful home turf of the Lower East Side (A Twist of the Knife, Force of Nature) for an exciting crime melodrama that pits the aging cop-turned- p.i. against a diabolical drug-dealer and his super-addictive designer drug, PURE. Always a smart stylist, Solomita expands his writerly horizons here by presenting the story from three primary points of view: that of Moodrow and of black lowlife Wendell Bogard, each told in the third person; and that of criminal mastermind Davis Craddock, told in the first person through his ongoing ``Autobiography.'' Although Moodrow's talewhich begins as romance-novel queen Connie Alamare hires him to get Craddock for overdosing her daughter and kidnapping her grandsonremains the focus, Craddock's memoirs prove the novel's chilling core as the white middle-class sociopathic genius reveals his devolution from an abused kid into the sexually depraved and homicidal false messiah of a Lower East Side-based psychotherapeutic cult, the Hanoverians, which recently has provided cover for dealing PURE, a heroin-coke combo more addictive than crack. Meanwhile, Wendell Bogard, hired by Craddock as his link to the black underworld, offers an ultrahip window on the action that provides much dark and tangy humor. As Moodrow homes in on Craddockwith the help of series regulars Betty Haluka, his lawyer girlfriend, and Jim Tilley, his old cop-partnerPURE-users start to turn up dead: the drug mutates lethally when heated, or smoked. Craddock runs, but not before snatching Betty, who in order to save Connie Alamare's grandsonrevealed as Craddock's sonhas tried to penetrate the Hanoverians incognito; wild with anger and fear, Moodrow kills Bogard, then tracks down Craddock for a bloody showdown. Strong, swift, and sure, but lacking the pervasive humanity and poetry of the streets that made Force of Nature (1989) a crime-thriller classic.
Pub Date: May 31, 1991
ISBN: 0-399-13593-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1991
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
