The apparent suicide of her libertine younger sister leads an up-and-coming Wasp lawyer into the orbit of a Cuban grandee and his attractive family—and to an indictment for murder—in an intelligently steamy first novel. Jimmy Panther, an understandably cynical Indian Everglades tour guide and alligator handler, discovered the body of pretty Renee Pettis while showing a Scandinavian family the saurian terrors outside Miami. As it happened, Mr. Panther recognized the corpse from a distance, having had some rather odd business dealings with Renee in the recent past. Mr. Panther is just one of the upsetting characters who enter attorney Gail Connor's life as she tries to tie up the many loose ends her sister has left lying around the city. Gail quickly learns that Renee carried on with drug-dealers, was into rather advanced sexual activities, and secretly met Gail's husband, Dave, regularly for lunch. Was Dave the father of Renee's unborn child? He says not. Perhaps the father was too-slick property developer Carlos Pedrosa, with whom Renee carried on for months? Gail sincerely hopes the father was not Carlos's cousin Anthony Quintana, the exceptionally handsome lawyer she just met in court. She rather fancies Anthony—and, as it turns out, she will rather need him when the Miami police decide that Renee could not have slit her own wrists but that Gail very likely could have. It takes every bit of the family's political pull and spare cash to keep Gail out on bail so that she can find out why anyone would want to kill Renee, how Jimmy Panther got his hands on a valuable Indian artifact that seems to have something to do with the murder, what it is about her mother's cousin Ben that arouses such deep emotions, and exactly what she is going to do about the attractive but excessively secretive Mr. Quintana. Not terribly mysterious but deft, sexy, and populated with enough interesting characters for two books. Parker makes excellent use of Miami.
Pub Date: Jan. 10, 1994
ISBN: 0-525-93744-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1993
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
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