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For The Innocent

Name: For The Innocent
Author: Bret Lambert
ISBN: 978-1-4969-4847-2

by Bret Lambert ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 2, 2014

An improbable tale that delivers cheesy action-adventure fun, despite its drawbacks.

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Members of an elite, covert anti-terrorist squad reunite to rescue one of their own from the world’s deadliest terrorist in this thriller.

English nobleman Harrington Lloyd-Creighton assembles the far-flung members of his InterOps team to rescue Stewart Savage, a former colleague who’s been captured by Alexander Shaitan, head of the International Organization for Terrorist Aggression, “an organization of vast proportions, larger than most international conglomerates, spread across the globe and into everything.” Shaitan is holding Savage prisoner in a labyrinthine, subterranean island fortress that features a giant, carnivorous lizard that’s unleashed on unfortunate prisoners. Lloyd-Creighton’s initially all-male international team includes an Australian, an Asian, a Scot, a Frenchman, a German, and an American whose surname is a German word for “avenger.” Shaitan had previously shattered each of their lives by sponsoring attacks that claimed loved ones. Even as they mount their rescue, they expect that their nemesis is using Savage as bait to trap them. Lambert’s debut novel is the literary equivalent of a 1980s direct-to-video action-adventure, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Those films were rife with clichés, bad acting, and ham-handed dialogue, but they were also lively fun. This story similarly hits the ground running as Savage tries to elude his pursuers through “miles upon miles of tunnels, cool corridors.” Shaitan is an urbane, suitably hissable villain, even if the banter Lambert writes for him isn’t very strong (“Go to hell,” says Savage. “All in due time, I’m sure,” responds Shaitan). Other terrorists tend to speak in stereotypical ways: “That was the wrong answer, infidel,” says one Iranian assassin. “Where are your pig-friends?” The book’s exposition can also be clunky and repetitive, as in the opening scene: “LABYRINTH. An entire terrorist organization built into a labyrinth that was more than two thousand years old….It was a labyrinth beneath the tiny island’s jungle surface.” That said, Lambert effectively propels the story forward, staging outrageous action set pieces that may be absurd, but are never boring.

An improbable tale that delivers cheesy action-adventure fun, despite its drawbacks.

Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-4847-2

Page Count: 256

Publisher: AuthorHouse

Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2015

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

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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.).