A New Jersey mobster sent to Florida to lie low just can't sit on his hands; his casually felonious big-money schemes make trouble for everybody, including himself. Don Carlo Magliocco, back in Jersey, thought he'd made himself clear to Vincent Strollo: take a break in Miami till the heat from the bank fraud and the Mafia graveyard wear off. But no sooner has restless Strollo shaken hands with Tony Ianello, Magliocco's Florida deputy, than he's laying the groundwork for another bank scam—using counterfeit securities as collateral for generous loans. He adds a construction deal, buying title to the Towers of Light apartments in order to siphon off money supposedly going to construction costs. And all this isn't enough. When Peter Siragusa, a cousin back home, finds 200 pounds of gold in his late father's basement and asks Strollo's help in fencing it, Strollo can't resist fleecing him. Moreover, when his long-suffering wife, Rosa, pesters him about their money, Strollo orders an off-the-books hit on her. Meantime, a pair of rogue narcotics cops, protected by an FBI supervisor with his own secrets to hide, stake their own claim on the millions in drug cash flooding Miami. A bevy of infinitely more boring police officers and FBI agents, aided by a small army of informers, are slowly piecing together Strollo's schemes—even as capos and soldiers of every stripe are jockeying for position in the post-Strollo mob. The highlight here is the ornately multilayered dialogue between characters who never speak their minds to each other. It's a shame Nehrbass (Dead Easy, 1992) doesn't handle his dazzlingly intricate web of plots and subplots with equal dexterity.
Pub Date: April 14, 1994
ISBN: 0-525-93664-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1994
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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