by A.C. Baantjer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1999
When Albert Cornelis Verbruggen, well-connected managing director of the Ysselstein Bank, gets a note hinting that his infant grandson will be kidnaped during his christening at Amsterdam’s historic Wester Church, Detective-Inspector DeKok and his partner, Inspector Dick Vedder, are dispatched to keep an eye on the ceremony while ten constables patrol the area outside the church. But the kidnaping of young Albert LaCroix is one of the few felonies that doesn’t get committed. Instead, when DeKok introduces himself to Stella LaCroix, the child’s mother, she faints away and later disappears from her hospital room. By that time, her father, the eminent banker, has been shot to death in the apartment of Carla Herten, a prostitute he had long patronized, and evidently shot as he knelt on the carpet, begging for his life. Another series of threats’some by letter quoting the baptismal service (“I have called thee by thy name; thou art Mine”), some in person (“Someone should stop him personally . . . . That someone is me”)—lead DeKok and Vedder to a walk on the wild side among some of Carla Herten’s less savory clients, and ultimately to what looks like the world’s least appetizing choice of suspects: DeKok’s boss, Judge-Advocate Jules Schaap, or Peter Bowen, who swore revenge on Verbruggen numerous times before he died. The routine solution, though, doesn’t fulfill the promise of the inventive setup, making this 18th of DeKok’s US appearances (DeKok and Murder in Ecstasy, 1998, etc.) one of his lesser efforts.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-881164-17-9
Page Count: 201
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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