Word maven and New York Times columnist Safire's third novel (Freedom, 1987; Full Disclosure, 1977): a transnational thriller with immensely entertaining results. The cold war is long over, and the Russian Federation's Security Ministry has lost all track of a sleeper agent the KGB placed in the US during the 1970shis mission: to invest a small fortune in Western capital markets with the help of inside information from the Kremlin. The folks running the cash-strapped show in Moscow want to locate the never-activated operative, whose files were destroyed to prevent discovery of his name by rival services, and to recover the billions he's amassed. Veteran American newsman Irving Fein also wants to find the missing man to confirm an exclusive career-renewing story. On the trail, too, are some hard-line reactionaries who want funds to underwrite restoration of an authoritarian regime and the Soviet Union's lost territories. With a book contract in hand, Fein and a CIA contact devise an ingenious plan to lure the sleeper into the open. As it happens, the Memphis banker they recruit as willing bait may be the very man everyone's looking for. Before the true identity of the cosmopolitan financier becomes clear, however, he leads Fein & Co. on a merry chase. Meanwhile, several of the intrepid reporter's allies develop severe conflicts of interest and betray him in one way or another. At the close, it takes Fein nearly a year to sort out who's been doubled or tripled by which intelligence agencies and what outcome is to his own best advantage. Engaging and cunningly plottedwith a wealth of diverting asides on the self-importance of journalists, the duplicity of officialdom, the venality of big-time literary agents, and other of civilized society's burdens. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-43447-X
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995
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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