Some people are always ready to jump to conclusions. The cops who arrest Cletus Busters for murder are prejudiced against the Moskowitz Memorial Lab custodian just because he'd quarreled with Dr. Whitney Valentine, and because he practiced voodoo, and because when he opened a closet door he had no business messing with, Dr. Valentine's frozen corpse fell out, leaving its head broken off in Cletus's hands. Luckily, Cletus's sozzled pro bono lawyer, Mickey O'Rourke, has the wit to seek out Tubby Dubonnet as co-counsel. Tubby uneasily obliges, even though it'll mean time away from his suit on behalf of schoolteacher/boxer Denise DiMaggio, whose Uncle Roger is disclaiming her shares in the family business, and from Tubby's ever-expanding circle of drinking buddies. None of this adds up to much in the way of mystery, and purists may feel insulted when Tubby trots out the widow's current comforter and the late Valentine's own inamorata as if they were supposed to fool us, or when he wraps up Denise's lawsuit with a single phone call. (A few scenes showing a shady pair of plotters trying to mop up the fallout from the Valentine killing are interpolated for the sake of readers who can't stand the suspense of wondering whether Cletus really is guilty.) Fans of jocular Tubby (City of Beads, 1995, etc.), though, will drink up the convivial New Orleans atmosphere, and the spectacle of a lawyer whose co-counsel declines to examine a witness because his doctor's ordered him to avoid conflict.
Pub Date: Jan. 27, 1997
ISBN: 0-399-14184-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1996
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
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