The solution is telegraphed early on, but the plucky heroine and her tough-guy boss work well together in an amusing period...
A rebellious upper-class Bostonian and an ex-cop gone private make for a volatile investigative team, especially in 1926.
Mercedes Louise Allcutt has fled to her sister’s home in Los Angeles to escape her domineering mother and take a job she hopes will provide her with a fund of real-life experiences for her planned future career as a writer. Horrified when her mother turns up on the doorstep, Mercy deals with the problem by racing off to her job as secretary for private investigator Ernie Templeton. When Ernie refuses to help prospective client Francis Easthope, whose mother is being exploited by spiritualists, Mercy, who’s had some luck in the past (Lost Among the Angels, 2006, etc.), offers her services. Even though both Ernie and the police sternly warn her against meddling, she takes charge when a famous gossip columnist is murdered at a seance at the Easthope cottage. Equally eager to prove herself and avoid her mother, Mercy keeps sleuthing. But it’s in the company of her mother that she attends a second seance at which the murdered woman’s son and a movie star both pass out, one of them failing to survive the night. Although her naiveté nearly makes her a third murder victim, Mercy closes the case just as the country is mourning the death of Rudolph Valentino.
The solution is telegraphed early on, but the plucky heroine and her tough-guy boss work well together in an amusing period piece reminiscent of old Hollywood.Pub Date: July 17, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-59414-783-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Five Star/Gale Cengage
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2009
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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