Crisscrossing sexual allegations heat up a dirty, vacuous Senate race: a bittersweet election-year bonbon from veteran journalist Wicker (One of Us, 1991, etc.). After years of catatonic dozing in a safe western House district, Rep. Victor T. Donovan suddenly explodes onto the national scene when he interrupts a routine subcommittee hearing by accusing a prominent industrialist of ties to pornography. When the resulting rocket of publicity demonstrates that although Donovan may not have an idea in his head, he has a record clean as a blank slate and an unmatched instinct for the political jugular, kingmaker Darwin John decides he's just the long-shot to take on two-term Senator O. Mack Bender. Armed with TV-generation Rafael Ames's attack ads (``Even his ink is red!'') and a dubious rumor about Bender's ancient dalliance with Gabriella Lukes—a rumor whose possible backlash he defuses by publicly firing Calvin Kyle, the digger who dug it up—Donovan pulls close enough in the polls to provoke Bender into contemplating an equally scurrilous counterattack (substantiated by none other than Kyle, who's naturally gone over to the enemy): revealing the equally ancient liaison between Josie Donovan and aging, womanizing columnist Milo Speed. Sensation- -because although many candidates in US politics have lived down their own sexual shenanigans, nobody's ever survived public identification as a cuckold. Warned of the danger by unloving but loyal Josie, Donovan plots to contain the damage, not knowing that the threat of exposure is driving Speed back to Josie and away from his current bedmate, perky, calculating staffer Lacy Farnes—who uses one cool eye to assess the candidate's virtue and the other to plot revenge. Electoral politics without gloves, courtesy, idealism, intelligence, or substantive issues of any kind—maybe so close to the current state of affairs that it turns out to be more depressing than funny. Read it and weep.
Pub Date: Oct. 19, 1992
ISBN: 0-688-10627-7
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1992
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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