by Anthony Mancini ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 26, 1991
A hint of Hitchcock, a pinch of Ibsen, a touch of Peter Benchley, and Bruce the Shark now glides on thermals over Manhattan, menacing the millennial World's Fair. No, it's not really a shark, it's a giant berkute (eagle) with a 12-foot wingspan, the genetic mutation of a pair of eagles who mated in the radiation-filled winds over Chernobyl. Raven Lokka, an American diplomatic attachÇ with a lust for falconry, is given the baby eagle in the Ala-Tau mountains of Kirghizia and takes it home to Minnesota, where he attempts to train it. When Brunhild, the eagle, flies off with Lokka's baby son, and then his wife commits suicide in despair, Lokka vows revenge. Four years later, in 1996, when the eagle has matured, Lokka hears of a giant raptor chewing up folks in Manhattan. And we hear of New York's mayor maddened by the possibility that the New York's World's Fair will not come off because of that enemy of the people, Brunhild. Enter Antonia Meadows, Curator of Birds at the Central Park Zoo, a divorcÇe with one child, who lives high, high up in a penthouse with a beautiful terrace open to the heavens. When the eagle kills her zoo's star panda, Antonia teams up with police lieutenant David Torino, who was the first to determine that the city's rash of strange disembowelings came from a giant bird. What plot there is serves as casing for overgenerous amounts of filler about raptors—but, then, wasn't Moby Dick like that about whales? Does it take storytelling genius for a vengeful Brunhild to snatch Antonia's child from her terrace and carry him still alive to her big nest atop the Woolworth Building? Is there a reader alive who won't remember a giant ape falling, falling...or Ahab lashed to Moby Dick, or Bruce gobbling up crusty old Robert Shaw—and not expect to see Raven Lokka and Brunhild locked in a death embrace above the gargoyles of Woolworth? No disappointments! All stops pulled out on schedule.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1991
ISBN: 1-55611-234-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1991
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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