This thriller, the first in a planned series, involves fantastical elements and two intrepid adventurers.
When George Jackson awakens, he understands one thing: He must leave his present location. As a folded letter placed next to him states, “I know that you do not remember anything and you do not know where you are, but you must leave this place as soon as possible, because your life is in danger.” Following the instructions in the letter, George ends up on a cruise ship, where he’s supposed to meet a genetics professor named Michael Faulkner. Instead, George meets a woman named Elena, a bikini-clad, sword-wielding beauty who saves him from a shark. She explains to George that a series of bizarre events occurred the night before, and the two soon become partners in unraveling a strange mystery. “Last night the skulls of Beethoven, William Shakespeare, Nostradamus, Merce Cunningham, Blackbeard, and Michelangelo were stolen within a short period of time,” she says, and “witnesses have said that a tall old man with a long white beard…was the last person seen around the tombs of Nostradamus and Merce Cunningham before the skulls were stolen.” Meanwhile, George notices a headline that Mr. Faulkner has been murdered. What follows is a wild romp involving an orange Ferrari, a strange symbol and a variety of flashy events, not the least of which involves a space shuttle. Succeeding in pushing beyond the boundaries of a Dan Brown–style mystery adventure, George and Elena’s investigation seems to know no limits. Though dialogue tends to fall flat—as when Elena exclaims, “This damned puzzle has to be solved. I have to find out how these incidents are related. I will catch this murderer!”—the story moves quickly, and verbal exchanges tend to be brief. Readers expecting a respectable level of realism in their adventure stories may scoff at the notion that, say, one character “intended to dig an underground tunnel all the way to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum” as a means to steal a space shuttle, but readers unperturbed by such wacky initiatives will be thoroughly thrilled. A cliffhanger ending manages to be even more bizarre than the rest of the story.
Occasionally flat but often exciting.
Pub Date: June 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1939123503
Page Count: 162
Publisher: Supreme Century
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2014
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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