A young mayor is pivotal in the revival of boomtown Miami Beach in the 1980s, all the while indulging his large appetites for money, power and sex.
In this compelling, well-written tell-all novel detailing his own political rise and fall, three-time Mayor of Miami Beach Daoud delivers a steamy story that reads like a cross between Hollywood Babylon and All the King’s Men. Undefeated through 12 years of elections in Miami Beach, Daoud became the city’s first mayor to gain re-election in 20 years and then became the city’s first three-term mayor. His job was officially part-time and certainly small potatoes, as he barely earned a five-figure salary for 60-hour weeks. While overseeing the revitalization of South Beach, lawyer Daoud realized that he possessed a couple valuable commodities: his vote and his influence. He began to sell these assets to local bankers, developers and union bosses. As his first marriage began to dissolve when his wife moved to North Carolina to attend dental school, Daoud discovered that money and power could attract women. Though an adulterer during two marriages, Daoud pushed himself to provide financial support for his mother and his young son. As federal agents closed in on him, he learned that most of his “friends” were only using him, and he eventually faced a 41-count indictment by himself, not wanting to snitch on his co-conspirators. Daoud fought the government in court, where he was ably defended by his attorney, Roy Black. When Daoud could no longer afford the best attorney available, his case began to crumble. Eventually he was found guilty on a handful of counts and sentenced to 63 months in a federal prison, of which he served 18 in various locations due to death threats against him. This compelling story may remind the reader of a Greek tragedy, as the protagonist’s own vices lead to his demise.
Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2006
ISBN: 978-1424310784
Page Count: 513
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A superb cautionary tale, and a grim reminder of the continuing cost of ethnic profiling, miscommunication and confrontation.
A young Muslim’s American experience raises his consciousness and shapes his future in this terse, disturbing successor to the London-based Pakistani author’s first novel, Moth Smoke (2000).
It’s presented as a “conversation,” of which we hear only the voice of protagonist Changez, speaking to the unnamed American stranger he encounters in a café in the former’s native city of Lahore. Changez describes in eloquent detail his arrival in America as a scholarship student at Princeton, his academic success and lucrative employment at Underwood Samson, a “valuation firm” that analyzes its clients’ businesses and counsels improvement via trimming expenses and abandoning inefficient practices—i.e., going back to “fundamentals.” Changez’s success story is crowned by his semi-romantic friendship with beautiful, rich classmate Erica, to whom he draws close during a summer vacation in Greece shared by several fellow students. But the idyll is marred by Erica’s distracted love for a former boyfriend who died young and by the events of 9/11, which simultaneously make all “foreigners” objects of suspicion. Changez reacts in a manner sure to exacerbate such suspicions (“I was caught up in the symbolism of it all, the fact that someone had so visibly brought America to her knees”). A visit home to a country virtually under siege, a breakdown that removes the fragile Erica yet further from him and the increasing enmity toward “non-whites” all take their toll: Changez withdraws from his cocoon of career and financial security (“. . . my days of focusing on fundamentals were done”) and exits the country that had promised so much, becoming himself the bearded, vaguely menacing “stranger” who accompanies his increasingly worried listener to the latter’s hotel. The climax builds with masterfully controlled irony and suspense.
A superb cautionary tale, and a grim reminder of the continuing cost of ethnic profiling, miscommunication and confrontation.Pub Date: April 2, 2007
ISBN: 0-15-101304-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2007
Although some of the Quinns' problems are resolved, many are not, happily promising a third installment next year.
In a sequel to last year's holiday novel Winter Street, Hilderbrand improves on the first by delving deeper into the emotional lives of the Quinn clan.
A year has elapsed and the events that closed the first novel have developed: thanks to the generous $1 million loan from his first wife, world-renowned newscaster Margaret Quinn, Kelley can keep his Winter Street Inn open, although it's lonelier now that his wife, Mitzi, has left him for George, their one-time holiday Santa. Kelley and Mitzi's son, Bart, is still MIA in Afghanistan, and Mitzi is falling apart; unhappy with George, she spends most days drunk. The lives of Kelley and Margaret's three children are also in crisis. Patrick is now in prison for insider trading, while his wife, Jennifer, tries to hold their family together with the help of illicit prescription pills. Ava seems to have found “the one” with vice principal Scott, if only she could stop thinking about wild Nathaniel. And middle son Kevin has made good with girlfriend Isabelle and their infant, Genevieve. Hopefully he can avoid his first wife, the troubled Norah, who has returned to the island. This year's Winter Stroll, a Nantucket Christmas tradition, coincides with Genevieve's baptism, bringing together all the Quinns and their issues. Also on island for the festivities is Margaret's beau, Drake, a pediatric neurosurgeon and about as perfect as can be, if only Margaret and he could bow out of their schedules and enjoy each other's company. In the ensuing few days, everyone has life-altering decisions to make—even Ava, now that Nathaniel has returned to the island to propose. Only Nantucket itself is left unscathed by the juicy drama. Described in all its magic (after all these years, one hopes Hilderbrand is on the tourist board's payroll), it seems impossible for such turmoil to exist on the charmed island.
Although some of the Quinns' problems are resolved, many are not, happily promising a third installment next year.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-26113-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
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