This pulpy tale about a shadowy research operation will most likely appeal to those in search of macho thrills.
A former soldier and an ex-boxer team up to investigate a top-secret government facility in this debut novel.
At the House of Cards in Yuma, Arizona, fate introduces bartender Vic Petrillo to Sam Monahan, a former boxer–turned–government informant who has been coerced into infiltrating a motorcycle gang, the Iconoclasts. For his part, Vic, a former Marine veteran who served in Afghanistan, wound up a police officer in a seaside community on Long Island before eventually turning up in Yuma. When Vic figures out what is really going on, he agrees to help Sam with his assignment, which ultimately includes penetrating a mysterious government research facility nearby. In lengthy flashbacks, readers find out about the surrogate family that Sam became a part of and how that all fell apart after a tragic accident in the boxing ring. And they learn how Vic married a beauty named Luz Maria, who was targeted by a cartel of Mexican assassins. He was also offered employment by a representative for the enigmatic Jasper Initiative, which turns out to have a link to the motorcycle gang Sam is now trying to join. Eventually, a new character introduced late in the work takes over the narrative, with readers following him from the Yuma research facility to an abandoned mental hospital on Long Island. It’s in this last section of the book that things go completely off the rails. A former Marine and member of law enforcement, Berrell writes convincingly about how tough guys interact with one another, even as his characterizations remain somewhat on the primitive side. The plotting here is literally all over the place, as the author tries to cram too many elements (terrorism, government conspiracies, black-ops gone bad, family secrets) into too few pages. And the story seems to take a grisly delight in depicting the various ways in which pain can be inflicted on the human body.
This pulpy tale about a shadowy research operation will most likely appeal to those in search of macho thrills.Pub Date: June 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-68289-987-8
Page Count: 206
Publisher: Page Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 3, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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