An ex-con's pen pals help him free his young niece from her kidnappers in a gritty beat-the-clock third thriller from Eidson (Dangerous Waters, 1991, etc.). In a slam-bang opening, a man/woman team of masked bandits gun down the owner of a convenience store outside Boston and, seemingly on the spur of the moment, take a nine-year-old girl with them when they flee. Desperate to recover their daughter Janine, Greg and Beth Stearns heed the warning of her abductors not to involve the police. Greg nonetheless calls in his brother Ross (a prodigal son who spent five years behind bars on dubious drug-running charges), and the two start trying to meet the $500,000 ransom demand. With Greg's business near bankruptcy and Ross out of work, their only means of raising big money is a piece of undeveloped coastal property on the North Shore of Massachusetts. Ross checks with a local Mafioso who makes an unacceptably low bid but assists him in other ways. Under a tight deadline, the brothers finally sell to a shady realtor who says he can come up with $700,000 in cash on short notice. The first attempt at an exchange goes wrong, and Greg dies in a shootout. Ross stoically buries him in the family's oceanside plot, then begins tapping prison and underworld contacts in an effort to identify the pair who snatched Janine. As it becomes clearer that they weren't acting on their own, however, the kidnappers also become increasingly erratic. Although gaining ground on his quarry, Ross is now concerned enough about Janine's safety to bring in the cops and FBI. He learns the disturbing truth about the plot in a climactic confrontation that brings unsuspected enemies of the Stearns clan into the open and adds three villains to an already high body count. A slick, notably violent entertainment that cuts to the chase at every opportunity.
Pub Date: Nov. 17, 1996
ISBN: 0-312-86115-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1996
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
BOOK REVIEW
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