A triumph thanks to its impressive snowy setting; should be read with a space heater handy.
A former U.S. government agent faces off against Russian operatives who may be planning a nuclear attack in Alaska in Ceroni’s (Meridian, 2000) thriller.
Ex–FBI agent Dave McClure leaves his Colorado home for Alaska. He hopes a wintry November trek will help him through the pain of losing his wife and son in a car collision a year earlier. But withstanding the cold takes a back seat when McClure finds a body in the snow. Nearby is the murderers’ campsite, and McClure recognizes the men’s weapons and dialect as Russian. They clearly have a mission planned, one that McClure aims to stop. Meanwhile, Mossad agents Raphael Mahler and Meira Dantzig team up with the CIA in America, surmising that the Russians will try to steal a nuclear warhead. The protagonist and Alaskan locale make a winning combo. McClure, for example, isn’t just up against Russian baddies, but a blizzard and a couple of grizzlies as well. His survival skills, like using snow for drinking water, become second nature to the narrative. But the best scenes are of McClure in operative mode: he spies on the Russians to gather intel; sneaks into their campsite to steal a bit of food and sever their means of communication; and is well-prepared for inevitable confrontations against the armed men. At the same time, Raphael and Meira lead a story that feels completely separate from McClure’s, even if the plots ultimately intersect. The Mossad agents spend much of their time guessing at what the Russians and Iranians are up to. These scenes, while never boring, lack tension since readers know more than the agents do. Their subplots gain traction once they connect with McClure’s CIA pal Pete Novak, especially as a romance brews between Raphael and Meira. If nothing else, sequences involving the U.S. and Mossad agents making their ways to Alaska are reprieves from the much more exhilarating moments with McClure. He’s a character who could have carried the story all on his own with only his intuition. And maybe a few guns.
A triumph thanks to its impressive snowy setting; should be read with a space heater handy.Pub Date: March 18, 2015
ISBN: 978-1478744573
Page Count: 306
Publisher: Outskirts Press Inc.
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
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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