A clandestine tournament has unforeseen consequences in this science-fiction action/thriller.
Frank Youngsmith, a hapless insurance agent, is forced to investigate a doctor’s suspicious death and discovers the doctor was involved with a secret organization that operates “The Tournament,” a secret war-game-like global contest that pits six teams, each backed by their home country, against each other in a series of public no-holds-barred gunfights. The teams are known by an identifying color and comprised of three people, and each team member carries a gun loaded with a special bulletlike “diode” that shocks and incapacitates whoever is on the receiving end. Behind the scenes, Tournament officials broker huge wagers (including some that are potentially world-altering) between anonymous bidders and do their best to ensure the match-ups run as smoothly as possible. Griffith, though, shies away from detailing Tournament machinations and quickly buries Youngsmith, who opens the book as the reader’s surrogate, in the narrative. Instead, the author devotes much of the book’s first half to characterization, shifting among a series of biographical flashbacks. While this makes it difficult to gain narrative footing, it’s an entertaining way to firmly establish the book’s characters and simultaneously build the tension toward their inevitable confrontations. Much of the second half of the book is dedicated to violent action sequences, and Griffith propels the story forward by pinballing among a series of elaborate set pieces, including a commercial airplane cabin and a packed Parisian nightclub. Griffith revels in the details of his action scenes and gives readers a visceral sense of the mayhem by sticking close to his well-painted characters. But, as a result, some plot information falls through the cracks. Many of these are logistical details relating to official Tournament operations, and while some readers might balk at Griffith’s narrative choices, others will be pleased to overlook them in light of the author’s stylistic command of character-driven action. Even though certain plot elements are undercooked, the well-drawn characters and exciting action scenes make this an enjoyable novel.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0982481745
Page Count: 505
Publisher: Griffith
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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