And what did the box contain? You’ll need to read this absorbing detective story to find out.
From British journalist Campbell, an intricate, fascinating look at some long-forgotten episodes in the quest by European powers to control India.
In August 1997, the Swiss Bankers Association issued a list naming some 1,800 holders of dormant accounts. Paging through the list on a computer in his newspaper’s office, Campbell’s eye was caught by one of those names: “Duleep Singh, Catherine (Princess), last heard of in 1942 living in Penn, Bucks.” On the hunt for a story, the journalist had the bright idea of creating news by reuniting the Singh family with its inheritance—inasmuch as the original Duleep Singh had given the fabulous Koh-i-Noor diamond to Queen Victoria, it stood to reason that the Swiss safe-deposit box contained jewels, or gold, or at the very least the deed to some rich property. Campbell’s quest took him down dozens of blind alleys, each knee-deep in red herrings, always leading back to the mysterious Maharajah Duleep Singh, “last king of the Sikhs,” who lived out his days in the second half of the 19th century as an exile in the Suffolk countryside, having lost his beloved Punjab through a combination of his own perfidy and England’s imperial machinations. The story is populated by characters that could only have come from the Victorian era’s large cast of eccentrics: the Maharajah himself, at once betrayed and traitorous; the mysterious General Carroll-Teviss, “a Philadelphia-born soldier of fortune who served a succession of popes, beys, and kings”; Levantine-Russian secret agents; and August Theodor Schoefft, “a cheroot-smoking Hungarian,” among them. Campbell’s investigation takes in imperial intrigues, intra-clan rivalries, intrafamilial homicides, mystical prophecies, and the long-thwarted dreams of Sikh independence as it delivers a satisfying if sometimes confusing story complicated enough to have come from the pen of le Carré.
And what did the box contain? You’ll need to read this absorbing detective story to find out.Pub Date: July 18, 2002
ISBN: 1-58567-293-9
Page Count: 474
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
When Kaysen was 18, in 1967, she was admitted to McLean Psychiatric Hospital outside Boston, where she would spend the next 18 months. Now, 25 years and two novels (Far Afield, 1990; Asa, As I Knew Him, 1987) later, she has come to terms with the experience- -as detailed in this searing account. First there was the suicide attempt, a halfhearted one because Kaysen made a phone call before popping the 50 aspirin, leaving enough time to pump out her stomach. The next year it was McLean, which she entered after one session with a bullying doctor, a total stranger. Still, she signed herself in: ``Reality was getting too dense...all my integrity seemed to lie in saying No.'' In the series of snapshots that follows, Kaysen writes as lucidly about the dark jumble inside her head as she does about the hospital routines, the staff, the patients. Her stay didn't coincide with those of various celebrities (Ray Charles, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell), but we are not likely to forget Susan, ``thin and yellow,'' who wrapped everything in sight in toilet paper, or Daisy, whose passions were laxatives and chicken. The staff is equally memorable: ``Our keepers. As for finders—well, we had to be our own finders.'' There was no way the therapists—those dispensers of dope (Thorazine, Stelazine, Mellaril, Librium, Valium)—might improve the patients' conditions: Recovery was in the lap of the gods (``I got better and Daisy didn't and I can't explain why''). When, all these years later, Kaysen reads her diagnosis (``Borderline Personality''), it means nothing when set alongside her descriptions of the ``parallel universe'' of the insane. It's an easy universe to enter, she assures us. We believe her. Every word counts in this brave, funny, moving reconstruction. For Kaysen, writing well has been the best revenge.
Pub Date: June 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-679-42366-4
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
For the author’s fans.
A Fox News journalist and talk show host sets out to prove that she is not “an empty St. John suit in five-inch stiletto heels.”
The child of devout Christians, Minnesota native Carlson’s first love was music. She began playing violin at age 6 and quickly revealed that she was not only a prodigy, but also a little girl who thrived on pleasing audiences. Working with top teachers, she developed her art over the years. But by 16, Carlson began “chafing at [the] rigid, structured life” of a concert violinist–in-training and temporarily put music aside. At the urging of her mother, the high achiever set her sights on winning the Miss T.E.E.N. pageant, where she was first runner-up. College life at Stanford became yet another quest for perfection that led Carlson to admit it was “not attainable” after she earned a C in one class. At the end of her junior year and again at the urging of her mother, Carlson entered the 1989 Miss America pageant, which she would go on to win thanks to a brilliant violin performance. Dubbed the “smart Miss America,” Carlson struggled with pageant stereotypes as well as public perceptions of who she was. Being in the media spotlight every day during her reign, however, also helped her decide on a career in broadcast journalism. Yet success did not come easily. Sexual harassment dogged her, and many expressed skepticism about her abilities due to her pageant past. Even after she rose to national prominence, first as a CBS news broadcaster and then as a Fox talk show host, Carlson continued—and continues—to be labeled as “dumb or a bimbo.” Her history clearly demonstrates that she is neither. However, Carlson’s overly earnest tone, combined with her desire to show her Minnesota “niceness…in action,” as well as the existence of “abundant brain cells,” dampens the book’s impact.
For the author’s fans.Pub Date: June 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-525-42745-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
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