If you were floored by Robin Williams's genie in Aladdin, wait till you sink your fangs into the latest, and unlikeliest, pop-cultural marriage: child-abuse specialist Vachss (Footsteps of the Hawk, p. 982, etc.) meets the Caped Crusader. And what a crusade the novelist has for the superhero. A chance meeting with Gotham caseworker Debra Kane opens his alter ego Bruce Wayne's eyes to the myriad ways child abuse, not poverty or social injustice, breeds crime. Faithful butler Alfred, judging the time to be right, passes on documents left behind by Batman's mother that show that she was no mere housewife, but a sociologist investigating the systematic exploitation of children (and assassinated along with her husband because of her discoveries). These revelations are enough to send the Dark Knight into a righteous fury against casual muggers and rapists, gangsters and crooked cops, and finally the ringleaders in the procurement racket. First, witnesses to his summary handling of criminals note a new anger emerging; then, Batman resolves to go to the heart of this hydra-headed scourge by Batjetting to the mythical Asian land of Udon Khai and fomenting a revolution against the child-buyers. On the one hand, Batman's vigilantism makes him a natural hero for Vachss, whose customary persona Burke is practically a Batguy himself. On the other hand, Batman's adventures hereas he disposes of each lower-level pimp, then moves up to the next leveldon't have any more substantive content than a ``Destroy All Exploiters'' video game would; impatient readers who skip the entire novel and go directly to journalist David Hechler's disturbing appended essay, ``Child Sex Tourism,'' won't have missed a thing. More successful as a media event, then, than as a work of narrative art, however demotic. But Vachss himself would probably agree that staging events like this one to grab headlines is precisely his point.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1995
ISBN: 0-446-51912-X
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995
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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