by Armand Croft ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 14, 2013
A cartoonish thriller that treads too often into male fantasies about dominating women.
A doctor and crime fighter gets pulled into an Old West–style showdown in this fifth installment of a series.
Dr. Andrew MacCrimmon is having a rough couple of days. First, he walks in on his wife, Karen, in bed with her personal trainer, Pavo Makkonen. Next, Andrew tries to shoot Pavo, but the naked man manages to escape down the back alleyway. Then, Andrew throws Karen bodily from the house with a few choice expletives. A few days later, during an aimless drive to help figure out what to do with himself, he is mugged, carjacked, and left unconscious in the desert. He is discovered by good Samaritan Bob Seibel, the owner of the BS Tavern and Grill in Chamberton, California. In exchange for Bob’s kindness, Andrew agrees to run the place while Bob and his wife go on vacation. It seems like a nice, calm spot to get his thoughts in order, slinging beers to the few regulars who come through the door. Not so. Enter Lena Montoya, a mysterious woman who looks remarkably like Karen: “The resemblance was astonishing—the same triangular face and squared off chin; the same high cheekbones, straight nose, and strong mouth.” What’s more, she seems to be on the run from someone—perhaps the same men who mugged Andrew. Even after he learns that her husband is a ruthless Mexican drug lord, he allows himself to become enamored by the beautiful Lena. He hatches a plan to keep her safe from her husband’s hired men, who have begun to swarm the area. At the same time, he begins receiving anonymous letters about the fate of his wife and son back in San Francisco. The situation quickly reveals itself to be much more complex—and interconnected—than Andrew realized. Caught between his past and present, is it even possible for Andrew to keep everyone he loves safe? Croft’s (Thorns of Remembrance, 2019, etc.) novel successfully summons the feel of an old action movie, particularly its neo-Western setting filled with outlaws and henchmen. But the book quickly and unintentionally turns into a parody of itself. The author seeks to portray Andrew as an honorable, aging doctor/brawler whom everyone finds attractive. One of Karen’s friends observes, “He’s so muscular, and he looks so ageless, like Sean Connery or Paul Newman,” and even the cartel members who mug him remember him as “good-looking.” Yet Andrew’s jealous, violent, and frantic behavior early on is so disturbing that his good-guy antics later won’t salvage readers’ opinions of him. He destroys Pavo’s motorcycle while fantasizing that it’s Karen. Later, he “blew his nose and wiped his eyes, and whispered to the room, as if in disbelief, ‘I’m a cuckold.’ And again, louder: ‘I’m a cuckold!’ ” When he calms down, he writes Karen a note, the first sentence of which reads: “Even the most sincere apology would be ridiculously inadequate for the brutal way I treated you, something like Hitler apologizing to the Jews.” The ending—where readers learn the context of how Karen came to sleep with Pavo—is needlessly exploitative (and not the first time Croft has gone to that well).
A cartoonish thriller that treads too often into male fantasies about dominating women.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4811-0361-9
Page Count: 305
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Armand Croft
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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