Millennial politics in 2001, in a sumptuous sequel to McCarry's long-running series about secret agent Paul Christopher's family (Second Sight, 1991, etc.). McCarry wastes no time in establishing his electrifying premise: On the eve of President Bedford Forrest Lockwood's second inaugural, his defeated opponent, Franklin Mallory, announces, first to Lockwood and then to the world, that someone in Lockwood's campaign stole the election by manipulating computerized vote tallies in three key states. Will Lockwood resign in Mallory's favor? He will not, thank you, but instead prepares for the inevitable impeachment trial by allowing his chief of staff—Christopher's cousin Julian Hubbard—to nominate as his new Chief Justice (who will by law preside over the trial) the strenuously unaffiliated Archimedes Hammett—that staunch courtroom defender of terrorists and consumer of natural foods. But Hubbard and Hammett, members of the utopian and ultra-secret Shelley Society since their days at Yale, are playing a far deeper game than Lockwood realizes. What they plan, together with the other Shelleyans who've honeycombed the government, is nothing less than the collapse of the presidency and the dawn of a totalitarian new government. It's Seven Days in May all over again, of course, but this time with every thrust and counterthrust—except for a single puzzling assassination early on—planned strictly within the laws of the land. As the Shelleyans plot to show how the Constitution allows for the nation to be delivered legally into the hands of a far-left dictatorship, McCarry grooms Christopher's now-grown daughter Zarah for a crucial role as political mediator and assassination bait. Even discounting the baroque embellishments that keep threatening to derail the story—Ouija board revelations, excursions into Mani†te folkways, impassioned accounts of new technologies for embryo recovery, leisurely portraits of every citizen residing within the Beltway—McCarry plots with a grand extravagance that generates tremendous suspense and leaves you more shaken than ever once you've turned the last page.
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-41533-5
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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