The author of the Napoleonic Sharpe series and the Revolutionary War Redcoat returns to the Thatcher era and a tale of love and treachery among yachtpersons. Heroic action in the Falklands brought Nick Sandman crippling injuries and the Victoria Cross. His subsequent stay in the rehab wards of the National Health Service has been made bearable only by his determination to return to the helm of his oceangoing sailboat Sycorax. But when he is at last able to limp out of the hospital and return to Dorset, he finds that Sycorax has been dragged from her berth, stripped of all her valuables, and left to rot on shore. Sandman's ex-wife has illegally rented Nick's dock to glossy talk-show host Tony Bannister, who tossed aside Sycorax to make room for his own flashy Wildtrack. Nick noses out his missing parts in Bannister's boathouse—and immediately suffers a vicious beating at the hands of Bannister's Boer henchman and helmsman Fanny Mulder. Heading off a lawsuit, Bannister promises to restore Nick's boat to her former glory. He also tricks Nick into starring in a documentary to be made by his lovely producer/mistress Angela Westmacott. As Sycorax shapes up, Nick gets sucked into Bannister's messy private life. Seems Bannister lost his wife in the Atlantic, and his stupendously wealthy American father-in-law plans revenge in kind when Bannister takes Wildtrack out for a transatlantic race. This was not what Nick had dreamed of back in the hospital. Not at all. If it weren't for the desirable Miss Westmacott. . . . The sailing scenes are thoroughly satisfying, but there are not quite enough of them to make up for the rather overblown soap-opera ashore.
Pub Date: July 26, 1988
ISBN: 0061462640
Page Count: 354
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1988
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...
Twenty-four years after a traumatic disappearance tore a Georgia family apart, Slaughter’s scorching stand-alone picks them up and shreds them all over again.
The Carrolls have never been the same since 19-year-old Julia vanished. After years of fruitlessly pestering the police, her veterinarian father, Sam, killed himself; her librarian mother, Helen, still keeps the girl's bedroom untouched, just in case. Julia’s sisters have been equally scarred. Lydia Delgado has sold herself for drugs countless times, though she’s been clean for years now; Claire Scott has just been paroled after knee-capping her tennis partner for a thoughtless remark. The evening that Claire’s ankle bracelet comes off, her architect husband, Paul, is callously murdered before her eyes and, without a moment's letup, she stumbles on a mountainous cache of snuff porn. Paul’s business partner, Adam Quinn, demands information from Claire and threatens her with dire consequences if she doesn’t deliver. The Dunwoody police prove as ineffectual as ever. FBI agent Fred Nolan is more suavely menacing than helpful. So Lydia and Claire, who’ve grown so far apart that they’re virtual strangers, are unwillingly thrown back on each other for help. Once she’s plunged you into this maelstrom, Slaughter shreds your own nerves along with those of the sisters, not simply by a parade of gruesome revelations—though she supplies them in abundance—but by peeling back layer after layer from beloved family members Claire and Lydia thought they knew. The results are harrowing.
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that she makes most of her high-wire competition look pallid, formulaic, or just plain fake.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-242905-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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