A first for Hall's indefatigable field agent (Quiller Meridian, 1993, etc.): After six weeks of numbing inactivity in the corridors of London, he agrees to let a rogue supervisor run him in a clandestine operation. The operation that Flockhart, the control, has set up is so hush-hush that he can tell neither the Ministry nor Quiller just what it is, only that Quiller's initial goal is to gather information on Pol Pot, whose Khmer Rouge is once again casting an ominous shadow over Kampuchea. Though he doesn't trust Flockhart- -when was the last time Quiller really trusted anybody?—Quiller agrees to run the operation on a need-to-know basis under a total blackout. The mission may be exasperatingly secret, but it's not boring. When his Cambodian contact, Parisian photojournalist Gabrielle Bouchard, points out the minister of defense at a neighboring table in their restaurant, Quiller follows him and kills his would-be assassin from the Khmer Rouge; from then on, it's bam, grunt, moan, as Quiller trades body blows with Khmer Rouge types in standard-issue skirmishes from Phnom Penh to Pouthisat to the darkest jungle. Meantime, he's got the information Flockhart wanted so badly—Pol is seriously ill, and his second-in- command, General Kheng San, is ready to launch a bloody offensive- -and doped out the not-very-subtle reason he was sent into the field: Flockhart was laying the groundwork for a bid to authorize air strikes against Kheng. But when the authorization isn't forthcoming, Quiller refuses to take Kheng out in cold blood (clearly the scenario Flockhart had in mind all along), until a final, foreseeable twist clears the air once and for all. Heavier on superannuated public-school types than on memorable adversaries or adventures, with measured outbursts of violence as mannered as Restoration comedy. Surely Quiller's been out in the field long enough to consider an honorable retirement.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 1-883402-40-9
Page Count: 247
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
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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