A cynically stylish thriller from the long-dormant Lysaght (Sweet Deals, 1985, etc.). When his Cuban hosts send fugitive financier Robert Vargo back to Los Angeles to replace a cocaine clearinghouse shut down by the local police, the expatriate's return triggers violent reactions from Havana's drug-trade rivals, federal prosecutors, and the swindler's underworld enemies. Among those who want a piece of Vargo is comely, hard-driving Assistant US Attorney Julie Beck, who was within two days of indicting him on fraud charges when he fled to the Caribbean, leaving behind an insolvent conglomerate and three murdered witnesses. To aid in the hunt for Vargo (whose presence on American soil has been confirmed by unlikely intelligence sources), Beck's masters at Justice parole Bobby Lee Baker, the former lover she successfully prosecuted for warning Vargo that the feds were closing in. Though embittered by his time behind bars, the easygoing Baker, joins the search for the globe- trotting outlaw. In relatively short order, he tracks Vargo to a Chinese enclave south of LA where Covington Barrows, a DEA official who's in league with Vargo, has been muddying the waters in Washington. With nowhere to turn, Baker and Beck (back in one another's good sexual graces) join forces with mobster Dominick Romano, who has a score of his own to settle with Vargo. The runaway con man gets what's coming to him in a shootout at a suburban warehouse where he's awaiting an 11th-hour drug shipment, but not before admitting that Baker played no role in his original getaway. At the close, the ever-vindictive Beck has enlisted the aid of a reluctant Baker in bringing Barrows to book. A lively, eventful entertainment whose archvillain bears only a passing resemblance to world-class grifter Robert Vescowho, after 25 years on the lam, has recently been detained by Cuban authorities.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-684-80078-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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