by Allan Folsom ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 6, 1994
In a Parisian cafÇ, an American surgeon recognizes the man who killed his father 30 years earlier and attacks him in a burst of uncontrollable passion—plunging himself into a conspiracy to bring the West once again under the wing of the Third Reich. Though his father's killer gets away, Dr. Paul Osborn soon tracks him down and identifies him as Albert Merriman, a career criminal supposedly dead since 1967. Paul plans to eliminate Merriman after forcing him to tell why he killed George Osborn. But a violent twist leaves him with nothing but another name: Erwin Scholl, who hired Merriman to kill four men including Osborn Sr. Enter the American bulldog Det. William McVey, who's helping Interpol investigate the baffling decapitation of seven victims who show evidence of being kept in a cryogenic freezer, and who's naturally interested in the American surgeon who was spotted in London just a few blocks from the latest murder. As Paul holes up with his well-connected new lover, Vera Monneray, and McVey tries to figure out why anybody would want to cool a corpse down near absolute zero, Swiss stroke victim Elton Lybarger heads back home with his New Mexico physical therapist Joanna Marsh- -who has no idea of the key roles Lybarger and his assistant Pascal Von Holden will play in a plot whose like you haven't seen since The Boys from Brazil. The Hitler-lives climax is tired, shrill, and overextended. Up until that last hundred pages, though, first-novelist Folsom keeps his complex plot spinning with tremendous brio and momentum. Anybody with the remotest taste for international intrigue will be hooked from page one. (Film rights to MGM; Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection)
Pub Date: April 6, 1994
ISBN: 0-316-28829-2
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1994
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by Allan Folsom
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by Allan Folsom
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by Allan Folsom
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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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