A fast-paced historical western lively with high adventure, sharp dialogue and a stand-up hero.
The second-born son of a prominent Texas rancher returns home to catch his brother’s killers in this tight, action-packed historical western.
Award-winning writer Edmonson’s tight prose wastes nary a word while describing the hard-edged character of Clint Cooper, a lawman in Porter’s Mill, Nev. Aware that his older brother, Jake, would inherit the family ranch, Clint left Pecos County, Texas, a long while before, content to make his way in the world. When Clint gets word that Jake’s been shot to death, he heads home to confront whoever murdered his brother. Clint’s first encounter with the sheriff of Stockton Springs makes it clear that if there’s justice to be had, Clint will have to mete it out himself. As businessman Montgomery Fitzgerald’s hired guns terrorize the Pecos country and lock up land left and right, leaving a trail of dead farmers and ranchers and shattered families, Clint spearheads the effort to take on the gang of vigilantes hiding behind the sheriff’s shield. All the while, he’s keenly aware of being watched closely by Emily Patterson; until meeting Clint, she assumed the men of the Wild West had faster trigger fingers and shallower values than their Eastern counterparts. Romance must take a back seat, though, while Clint eliminates the threat of armed thugs running things in Pecos County. Clint’s self-assured manner, strategic actions and firm advocacy of justice (not revenge) persuades the Cooper men, the surrounding ranchers and farmers and even Emily that he’s a wise and trustworthy man of action–he’ll get his man no matter what. Characters are played according to type–Shiloh Vance, the ruthless killer; Clint Cooper, the tough lawman with a loyalty streak as wide as the Rio Grande; Emily Patterson, the slightly cynical woman who dares to hope that this man might be different. Edmonson avoids predictability only because of his skilled plotting and cinematic action scenes. Vivid descriptions of the wild Texas landscape, coupled with dialogue that’s witty and deadly serious by turns, add depth and historical detail.
A fast-paced historical western lively with high adventure, sharp dialogue and a stand-up hero.Pub Date: April 23, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59330-535-4
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
War is hell in this novel of inspired absurdity.
Hailed as heroes on a stateside tour before returning to Iraq, Bravo Squad discovers just what it has been fighting for.
Though the shellshocked humor will likely conjure comparisons with Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse Five, the debut novel by Fountain (following his story collection, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, 2006) focuses even more on the cross-promotional media monster that America has become than it does on the absurdities of war. The entire novel takes place over a single Thanksgiving Day, when the eight soldiers (with their memories of the two who didn’t make it) find themselves at the promotional center of an all-American extravaganza, a nationally televised Dallas Cowboys football game. Providing the novel with its moral compass is protagonist Billy Lynn, a 19-year-old virgin from small-town Texas who has been inflated into some kind of cross between John Wayne and Audie Murphy for his role in a rescue mission documented by an embedded Fox News camera. In two days, the Pentagon-sponsored “Victory Tour” will end and Bravo will return to the business as usual of war. In the meantime, they are dealing with a producer trying to negotiate a film deal (“Think Rocky meets Platoon,” though Hilary Swank is rumored to be attached), glad-handing with the corporate elite of Cowboy fandom (and ownership), and suffering collateral damage during a halftime spectacle with Beyoncé. Over the course of this long, alcohol-fueled day, Billy finds himself torn, as he falls in love (and lust) with a devout Christian cheerleader and listens to his sister try to persuade him that he has done his duty and should refuse to go back. As “Americans fight the war daily in their strenuous inner lives,” Billy and his foxhole brethren discover treachery and betrayal beyond anything they’ve experienced on the battlefield.
War is hell in this novel of inspired absurdity.Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-088559-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Part of Hoffman's great talent is her wonderful ability to sift some magic into unlikely places, such as a latter-day Levittown (Seventh Heaven, 1990) or a community of divorcÇes in Florida (Turtle Moon, 1992). But in her 11th novel, a tale of love and life in New England, it feels as if the lid flew off the jar of magic—it blinds you with fairy dust. Sally and Gillian Owens are orphaned sisters, only 13 months apart, but such opposites in appearance and temperament that they're dubbed ``Day and Night'' by the two old aunts who are raising them. Sally is steady, Gillian is jittery, and each is wary, in her own way, about the frightening pull of love. They've seen the evidence for themselves in the besotted behavior of the women who call on the two aunts for charms and potions to help them with their love lives. The aunts grow herbs, make mysterious brews, and have a houseful of—what else?—black cats. The two girls grow up to flee (in opposite directions) from the aunts, the house, and the Massachusetts town where they've long been shunned by their superstitious schoolmates. What they can't escape is magic, which follows them, sometimes in a particularly malevolent form. And, ultimately, no matter how hard they dodge it, they have to recognize that love always catches up with you. As always, Hoffman's writing has plenty of power. Her best sentences are like incantations—they won't let you get away. But it's just too hard to believe the magic here, maybe because it's not so much practical magic as it is predictable magic, with its crones and bubbling cauldrons and hearts of animals pierced with pins. Sally and Gillian are appealing characters, but, finally, their story seems as murky as one of the aunts' potions—and just as hard to swallow. Too much hocus-pocus, not enough focus. (Book-of-the-Month Club selection)
Pub Date: June 14, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-14055-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
BOOK TO SCREEN
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