A bad-boy Hollywood director is terrorized by a pair of mass murderers inspired by his violent films, in this tepid satire from British playwright and first novelist Elton. It's Oscar night, and Bruce Delamitri has just garnered Best Director accolades for his ironic masterpiece Ordinary Americans (body count: 57) and has embarrassed himself with a mawkish acceptance speech. He circulates through the Governor's Ball, fawning over the big stars and spewing rudeness at everyone else before leaving with Playboy model Brooke Daniels. When he brings her home for the requisite seduction, she pulls a gun on him and demands a screen test. He agrees, and the two fall into each other's arms. They're interrupted, however, by the arrival of Wayne and Scout, a.k.a. the Mall Murderers. These attractive but amoral guys, inspired by the pointless violence of Bruce's films, have come to wreak some unspecified havoc. After they settle in for a drink, Wayne needles Brooke with provocative questions while waifish Scout feigns mortification. Bruce's agent is unfortunate enough to drop by uninvited (he's shot). Then Bruce's ex-wife Farrah and daughter Velvet show up; Brooke gets shot, and Wayne phones NBC. Two intrepid TV journalists, stripped down to their underwear, are admitted into the house. Bruce faces off against his captors for a live-TV debate about violence in the movies. But as things get talky, the ratings drop, so Wayne shoots Farrah. SWAT teams storm Bruce's house, and everyone is killed but Bruce and Scout. Bruce's career is clearly at an end. Elton's satire, meantime, scolds the usual suspects (the movie industry and the media) for the usual reasons (shallowness, vanity, greed) and condemns just about everyone, from the screw-loose psychopaths to the irresponsible director to the viewing public who crave (have been conditioned to crave?) bloodshed. There are a few lukewarm laughs here, but, overall, it's one more tired exercise in Hollywood-flogging.
Pub Date: Nov. 13, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-16965-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
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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