A long-thought-out espionage tale, about a dense and tangled search into the past that means to reveal something about the dense and tangled nature of man himself. Hyde (The Red Fox, 1985) again echoes le CarrÇ's bathysphere style and bottomless paragraphs, those shining flakes of analysis that lead into ever deeper analysis. Here, someone is out to kill retired naval security officer Jack Tannis, who lives near the China Lake Weapons Center in California's Mojave Desert. It was at China Lake that the air-to-air, heat-seeking Sidewinder missile, which gave total air superiority to US jet fighters, was invented and developed in the 50's. Somehow the Russians came up with an identical missile. China Lake scientist David Harper was set up to take the fall as the sellout spy. But intelligence officer Jack Tannis stood up for Harper, proved his innocence. Even so, Harper, discredited, lost all hope of pursuing a scientific career, went home to England, and became a nature photographer for public television. His wife Diana divorced him. Now, in 1985, Tannis finds himself almost assassinated in the desert; and then in the Welsh countryside, while hanging from a cliff-face and filming a rare eagle in flight, Harper too is the victim of an attempted murder. But...was he saved by a rope thrown to him by Tannis, whom he's not seen in 25 years? Tannis is gifted with somewhat magical powers of deduction, whose unleavings we follow inward leaf by leaf—a kind of parallel power to Harper's gift for semimagical infrared guidance systems. Harper's ex-wife Diana commits suicide but leaves behind a letter that eventually drives Harper into East Berlin and a search through the German rocket museum at Dorn, then to a cave on the rim of China Lake—where Tannis unknots the great mystery of Harper's life. Though its final unravelings become quite thin, and whether Hyde's endless deductive style really holds is questionable, this is a winner. Anyone reading to the end is presold on the genre and knows its shortfall.
Pub Date: May 7, 1992
ISBN: 0-679-41084-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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