A diverting tale of a protagonist and his new powers with series potential.
In Sutton’s debut thriller, a Vietnam vet acquires astounding new abilities that prove handy when facing various thugs.
After his time in Vietnam, John Clarkson sank into alcoholism, leaving him with a bleeding ulcer and a ruined marriage. Consequently, he goes on hiatus from his (and fellow vet Sid Collins’) Californian sheet metal company and takes a security job for a mine in Peru, where he’s bitten by a venomous spider. John eludes a slow death thanks to a potion he calls “Evil Liquid”: an ancient recipe of pepper seeds, wine dregs, and unknown herbs. John regains his strength and then some and even develops a sixth sense. Back in the United States, with a new pilot’s license, John agrees to fly Bonnie Kline, an aerobics instructor and friend, to Seattle and Canada to secure rights to a mine claim. As the spider-bite treatment also boosted John’s sexual stamina, he’s intimate with quite a few women, including Bonnie and (separately) her niece, Helen Boyd, who joins the flight to see family in Canada. But John will need his other abilities when dealing with assailants, from irate bikers in Seattle to prison escapees who’ve made their way to British Columbia. Sutton’s novel feels like two stories in one, linked by the protagonist. The book, primarily set in Seattle and Canada, is rife with baddies looking for a fight. Though these scenes often showcase John nobly protecting someone, they’re also brutal; one would-be assailant gets a boot heel “in the left kneecap, destroying the bone instantly.” Escaped convicts, Jimmy Q and Bob Logan, are the clear villains, though their inevitable confrontation with John is unfortunately anticlimactic. The novel then rather oddly switches from a third-person narrative to first-person, with an entirely new setting (Alaska) and villains (possibly crooked brokers) after John employs his sixth sense for stock market investments. Though the shift in perspective is jarring, John remains a man of action.
A diverting tale of a protagonist and his new powers with series potential.Pub Date: June 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5255-2401-1
Page Count: 378
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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