First-novelist West, himself a former marine captain (The Villager, 1972) takes on complex themes here—duty, loyalty, and...
When five Marines cross from Kosovo into Serbia to rescue a kidnapped comrade, they launch an international incident—and what might the best suspense novel of the year.
Five reservists from New York City: a firefighter, a toy-store executive, an auto mechanic, a computer nerd, and a commodities trader. But that hardly does them justice. They are, in fact, something of a new breed: a carefully selected, superbly conditioned reconnaissance team (the Pepperdogs), highly trained to infiltrate enemy lines and cause maximum chaos wherever they operate. Things in the Balkans are relatively quiet post 9/11, which is how US policy wonks much prefer it. But lotsa luck. Captain Tyler Cosgrove, an American marine a day away from shipping home to be with his dying mother, is whacked on the head and hijacked by a brutish Serbian soldier who covets his motorbike. Faster than you can say Semper Fi!, and without the formality of specific orders, Captain Mark Lang mounts up. “Get gear and pull ammo,” he tells his team, partly because Cosgrove is Lang’s best friend and partly because marines don’t leave marines to un-tender mercies. So begins an improbable two-day journey as the Pepperdogs walk a hundred miles and fight eight pitched battles, by then having enraged the Serbs, tickled the Muslims, annoyed their own brass, and made headlines all over the world, laudatory and condemnatory in about equal measure. As for the mission, well, they’re marines, aren’t they?
First-novelist West, himself a former marine captain (The Villager, 1972) takes on complex themes here—duty, loyalty, and what to do when they conflict—and deals with them capably. Mostly, though, this is a story about warriors, told authoritatively and brilliantly.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2003
ISBN: 0-7432-3589-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2002
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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