An underwhelming tale of nukes, coups, and spies by thriller veteran Coppel (Wars and Winters, 1993, etc.). Soyuz, a nationalist group seeking to reunite the historic Russian empire, infiltrates Russian government and military offices, including the command of the submarine Pravda. To provide a diversion during Soyuz's planned Moscow coup of the following year, the Pravda crew plants a device in the waters of northern Canada that will emit an electronic pulse and destroy US communication systems. Participating crew members are killed to ensure silence, but one scientist and one witness survive. Marine biologist Arkady Karmann flees the sinking Pravda off the Cuban coast, climbs out of the shark-infested waters onto a Honduran fishing boat with all but one hand, and begins a nearly year-long trek through Central America. The witness, left-wing activist Anna Neville, is fired at by the Pravda as she shoots nature photography from an airplane, but she later assumes that she was hit by an American submarine. In November of the following year, traditional, craggy Marine John Morgan is assigned to keep her from making accusations against the US. Despite their ideological differences, they ignite sexually, and Morgan becomes her bodyguard when she is marked for assassination by Marina Suslova, a Soyuz agent who seduces a male reporter and a female National Security Advisor assistant. The device ticks away under the Arctic ice and, true to Soviet inefficiency, becomes flooded and is rendered useless, but its plutonium reactor leaks. We should feel the tension of a countdown as the Americans and Canadians search for and dismantle the reactor, but Coppel cannot sustain it. Likewise, the narrative lacks the violence, action, and high technology that might excuse its vapid characters. It's enough to make you nostalgic for the Cold War.
Pub Date: Oct. 17, 1994
ISBN: 1-55611-411-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
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
APPRECIATIONS
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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