Hang on to your hats, folks, as we blast off for the spacey realm of international terrorism, apocalypse, and numerology. It all starts when Alabama Senator-turned-Vice President Samuel Harrot is assassinated during half-time festivities at the 1998 Sugar Bowl. The triggermen are soon found blown to pieces in their getaway boat, and the trail dies with them—except for Brad Yeary, the New Orleans Times-Gazette reporter who, now unable to wrap up his pregame interview with Harrot, dopes out that Harrot's collapse means murder by parlaying a few lucky breaks into a big story. But it's just those breaks that draw the attention of the desperate FBI and the Secret Service, especially since Brad's girlfriend, Jill Crenshaw, is elevated to the Senate when Louisiana Senator Benjamin Ashford is nominated to succeed Harrot. Intent on clearing himself and Jill from suspicion as well as on landing the true story of the assassination, Brad huddles with down-home Rev. William Hutteth, who points out that 1998 equals 666 (the biblical number of the Beast) times 3—and that the year falls in the middle of the turbulent dozen years bracketed by the reversible dates 1991 and 2002. Hutteth is convinced, and soon Brad is too, that the killing was provoked by militant Muslims, but all the evidence points much closer to home—to a plot to prune Harrot from the Executive Branch that goes all the way to the top. In the manicured hands of Jeffrey Archer, this delirious scenario might have produced a camp classic, but first-novelist Cawood (Tennessee's Coal Creek War, not reviewed) plots too dutifully—even the Kentucky Derby finale fizzles—and writes too earnestly (though there are nuggets to provide much fun: ``Anonymity was his sought after companion,'' muses Brad in a contemplative mood). For regional sports fans and Arab-bashers only. Everybody else is likely to agree with Jill's final verdict: ``I don't like politics, Brad.'' (First printing of 30,000; $30,000 ad/promo budget; author tour)
Pub Date: May 15, 1996
ISBN: 0-9642231-9-8
Page Count: 312
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1996
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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