A deranged killer stalks two teenagers in this unvarnished thriller from Dexter (Alien Game, 1995, etc.). Out with his flaky friend, Avery, Jere gets a glimpse of a strange zoo employee, but it's enough to unlock a flood of fragmentary dreams and long-buried memories of an unsolved murder he witnessed ten years before. The tension mounts when the employee, Al Watkins, disappears; Jere finds evidence that the man is visiting the zoo at night, and Avery begins hearing odd noises in her building. Jere comes over to keep her company, and Watkins confronts them in the laundry room at gunpoint. Dexter's efforts to flesh out the action with subplots are only minor distractions. Shabby, threatening, always mumbling to himself, Watkins makes a thoroughly terrifying villain who will rivet readers—as will the shootout that ends the climactic standoff. Fans of Joan Lowery Nixon's suspense novels will relish this pulse-pounder. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-688-13182-4
Page Count: 153
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1997
In the tradition of Nat Love comes a fictional black cowpoke, Prometheus Jones, and his best buddy, Omer Shine, escaping from a lynch mob in Tennessee to a Kansas cattle drive on its way to the Dakota Territory during the chaotic years following the end of the Civil War. Prometheus is anxious to get to Texas where clues about his missing father lead him, but he sees the advantages of throwing in with Beck, the drover in charge of the cattle herd. Not that he knows much about cattle, but he can break almost any horse and is determined to learn. The adventures are nonstop, with mentions of Custer and warring Pawnee and Sioux Indians adding to the excitement and danger of buffalo stampedes and river crossings. While most of the characters enjoy three-dimensional treatment, the Indians come across as insubstantial by comparison, demonstrating the difficulties in accurately reflecting attitudes of the day in light of present-day awareness. The prejudice against blacks remains threatening and constant, and Prometheus’s transformation into Deadwood is convincing, even when insurmountable odds seem stacked against him. (Historical fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59078-637-6
Page Count: 234
Publisher: Front Street/Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Mexico and the Mayan people serve as metaphorical fodder to help a white American. Sullenly insecure Kat, 13, pouts on her Yucatán summer vacation. She’s missing a popularity-determining slumber party, and she fears every stereotype about Mexico from bandits to food poisoning—and Dad’s prompt case of the latter from a roadside stand gives cringeworthy textual validation to those worries. On a bus tour including ancient cities, Mayan teen Nando tells a long story. This inner tale about an elite Mayan girl, pre-Spanish conquest, awakens Kat’s confidence, but the parallel is highly problematic. One explicit comparison, between Mayan religious human sacrifice and American social sacrifice of unpopular kids, approaches the obscene. It’s as if Nando’s culture—from a pyramid that tourists are forbidden to climb but Kat does anyway, to ancient religion, to a modern quinceañera—exists primarily to inspire Kat. When she finally (it’s long overdue) releases her conviction that contemporary Mayans are dangerous, she replaces it with a shallow celebration of people who are poor but “so happy twirling around in their simple cotton dresses and bare feet.” Skip. (author’s note, glossary, online resources) (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-15-206434-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
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