Libya plots a chemical weapons attack in this novice entry in the Tom Clancy Stakes. Target: the US. And possibly Qaddafi has Israel’s Knesset in mind as a secondary target. So where has he hidden his bombs? And when does he plan to explode them? No one knows. Clearly, the Colonel thinks he’s ahead of the game, but he hasn’t reckoned on the Schmidt brothers, who turn out to be very bad medicine for him indeed. Bill Schmidt is captain of an American destroyer, Jim Schmidt press secretary to the President. There are those who look askance at the two, regarding them as loose cannons, and it’s true they’ve been known to stray from standard operating procedure. Bill, for instance, is much more relaxed with his crew than strict, by-the-book Navy formalists find reassuring. Jim, meanwhile, is too quick with a quip, or so some think. And people remember that once in public he referred to a Cabinet member as a windbag and wasn’t as dismayed by the gaffe as he should have been. But they do get things done, those Schmidts. When high-command counterplotting requires that a Libyan plane be shot down —accidentally,— Jim suggests Bill for the job. Bull’s-eye! One Libyan aircraft dead in the water. When Bill, brilliantly, deduces the whereabouts of the deployed weaponry, it’s Jim he calls. Result: the President is spirited out of harm’s way and the stash brought to light in the nick of time. Thwarted by Schmidt grit and resourcefulness, Libya pays a heavy price for vaulting ambition, while Bill gets the girl. Newcomer Harlow is a retired Navy captain, a former Assistant White House Press Secretary to George Bush, and currently the Director of Public Affairs for the CIA. But he isn’t (yet) much of a novelist. Though some of his characters are engaging and the Beltway stuff interesting, what should be gripping never is.
Pub Date: Feb. 18, 1999
ISBN: 0-684-85039-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1998
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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