After writing five mystery thrillers as Keith Peterson (The Scarred Man, 1989), Klavan at last puts his real name on one-and no wonder: this take of a psychiatrist trying to save his kidnapped daughter is a virtuoso display of Chinese puzzle-box plotting and slick emotionality, worthy of Hitchcock at his best. ``The right apartment was tough to find, so they murdered the old lady,''-sociopath Sport and his monster-sized retarded sidekick Maxwell, that is, setting up in this opening sentence their rental of the suddenly vacant apartment across the yard from the one owned by mild-mannered shrink Nathan Conrad, wife Agatha, and five-year-old daughter Jessica. The Conrads become aware of Sport and Maxwell when they awake one day to find their apartment broken into, Jessica snatched, and Sport on the phone. The ransom? Nathan must visit Elizabeth Burrows, the paranoid angel-faced murderess he's treating at the request of fellow shrink Jerry Sachs, and ask her, ``What is the number?'' and ``don't say a word'' to the cops, warns Sport, whose surveillance of the Conrads through binoculars convinces the couple that they're being watched by hidden cameras and microphones-a lie that cuffs Agatha as she tries to call for help from a neighbor and a plumber: Or is one of these men Sport in disguise? Meanwhile, Nathan dashes to the asylum, confronts Sachs, and visits fragile Elizabeth, discovering, as twist follows twist, that her paranoia is based on a hideous reality. Breaking her out, Nathan races with Elizabeth to a rendezvous with Sport (be at the clocktower by 9:00 p.m. or Jessica dies) as she reveals ``the number''-key to a fateful secret. But even after Nathan settles with Sport, can he-as asked in an extended and astonishingly cathartic climax-find Jessica in time to keep monstrous Maxwell from tearing the little girl apart limb by limb? Not profound, and blatant in its emotional manipulations, but peopled with rich characters and intensely gripping and suspenseful: one of the most entertaining psychothrillers in many months.
Pub Date: May 7, 1991
ISBN: 0-671-74008-3
Page Count: -
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1991
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
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