Sadly, the killer’s revealed just as the lovers have resolved their differences. The last thirty pages might as well be...
Miami lawyer Gail Connor squares off against her ex-fiancé Anthony Quintana in the fifth volume of this interchangeably titled series (Suspicion of Betrayal, 1999, etc.).
After Roger Cresswell, do-nothing Executive VP of Cresswell Yachts, is shot dead in the middle of a spirited party on the family estate, Gail’s old nemesis Sgt. Frank Britton naturally overlooks all the family members present to fix on Bobby Gonzalez, East Harlem tough guy/ballet dancer, who was working at the party even though Roger had just fired him from his job at the boating yard. Bobby’s girlfriend Angela Quintana swears that he couldn’t have been the killer, but she doesn’t want to tell her old-world father that part of Bobby’s alibi depends on her. So Gail goes instead after the rest of Bobby’s alibi, Nate Harris, a criminal judge he talked to at the party, and finds that (1) Harris, hopeful of a job on the federal bench, doesn’t want to tell the cops he was smoking weed with this kid; and (2) doggone if Harris isn’t Anthony Quintana’s friend and client as well. It’s a lucky thing that Angela and the judge give Gail and Anthony grounds for endless skirmishes, because the real suspects are a dull lot: Roger’s gold-digging widow Nikki; his parents Claire and Porter (the stuffy company president); Porter’s brother Dub (director of sales) and his wife Elizabeth; Dub’s and Liz’s children Sean and Diane (the only Cresswell with an ounce of decency, outsiders maintain); and Claire’s nephew, low-end art dealer Jack Pascoe. Longtime fans will know enough to forget the family’s dueling alibis and canned secrets, which recall Agatha Christie at her weariest, and focus on Gail and Anthony as they revisit the gender battles of the ’70s —or the Neanderthal Era.
Sadly, the killer’s revealed just as the lovers have resolved their differences. The last thirty pages might as well be blank.Pub Date: May 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-525-94542-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
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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