Serial killer saga undistinguished by any effort to lift itself out of bat guano. Trey Campbell, a harried psych tech at Darden State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, needs a break and so takes his wife Carly and two kids to Catalina Island for a vacation. While there, Trey's worst patient back at Darden State, who has fallen in love with him and believes that he's her Immortal Beloved, in this case Jack the Ripper, escapes. She is Agnes Hatcher, known as ``the Gorgon,'' a particularly vicious and deranged killer, notorious for her habit of keeping a body part from each of her victims as a souvenir. A murder machine with no feelings other than her infatuation with Trey, Agnes is beyond psychotropic drugs' ability to calm her down; she is kept in a sealed-off room, under restraints, and in a face mask like Hannibal Lecter's. None of this helps, however: She escapes from Darden State and heads for Catalina and Trey as if on a homing beacon, leaving many bodies along the way. Trey, aware of her escape, is fed endless soothing remarks by Carly, who pooh-poohs her husband's justifiable fear. Meanwhile, their two kids, Teresa and Mark, bored stiff by their boy-hungry, wine-drinking babysitter Jenny, take off on their own. Background material includes Trey's guilt for once having shot an intruder in his home, an old man he mistook for an escaped inmate, and Agnes's memories of past lives in which she learned that if she hoped to gain immortality she would have to murder people during each of her incarnations. She should be insured through the third millennium, judging by the body count here. Agnes herself had been kidnapped as a teenager, kept in chains for years, and raped, tortured, and mutilated before murdering her abductor. Now, she falls in with a fellow psychopath who takes her to Catalina, and the Campbell family, in his boat. Junk by the numbers.
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-57566-160-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1997
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
