In LiVolsi’s debut thriller, a Colorado pharmaceutical firm may hold the key to eradicating AIDS, but powerful people are willing to kill countless others to find the AIDS cure.
Dave Clement, a vice president at Prodeus, Inc., has been working with the Aldrich Institute in using the Portable DNA Analyzer in West Africa; it identifies candidates for a malaria vaccine and ensures that those who are HIV-positive were infected prior to their vaccination for malaria. But Aldrich Executive Director Claire McQuaid may have another agenda; she hopes to include a Trojan horse in the vaccine to combat HIV. The Trojan horse isn’t ready and will kill patients in mere months, but Claire and her colleague Eldridge Perry are only concerned with wiping out AIDS—they believe those who die are expendable. While Dave searches for a way to save his daughter, Liv, who’s contracted HIV, and repair his fractured family, Sheila Stratemeier, the institute’s lead developer for the malaria vaccine, tries to warn anyone she can about the potential deaths of thousands. LiVolsi’s novel, the first in a series of four, is a densely plotted thriller that churns out suspenseful scenes: Civil unrest in Nigeria and Sierra Leone is lucidly detailed with relentless explosions, and even Dave’s racing to Liv’s volleyball game is tense. Characters are refreshingly intricate. Protagonist Dave isn’t a flawless hero; he seems to be an obsessive workaholic. The bad guys are even better; they’re villainized by their actions, but while Eldridge is undoubtedly menacing, Claire is tortured, so mentally distraught by her scarred body that she rejects intimacy. As the start of a series, the book establishes a labyrinthine plot that never quite catches up to itself. There’s much more teased in Book One than questions answered, from the unknown manner in which Liv contracted HIV and the source of her apparent hallucinations to the fates of numerous characters in West Africa.
A terrific launch for the author’s series, but readers may want to have the sequels handy.
Pub Date: Nov. 28, 2013
ISBN: 978-0976944652
Page Count: 152
Publisher: Fifth Book Ltd
Review Posted Online: July 9, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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