A promising thriller with a provocative premise, but one that lets the cat out of the bag a bit too early.
In Waldron’s (Lion’s Head Deception, 2013, etc.) conspiracy thriller, a power-hungry businessman hatches a plot to institute martial law in Toronto, and the only people who can stop him are a blogger, a reporter, and a cameraman.
Blogger Matt Tremain stumbles upon the story of a lifetime when a source tips him off to the nefarious master plan behind CleanSweep, an all-encompassing surveillance program that’s been granted unprecedented freedom to monitor everyone in the city of Toronto in the aftermath of recent riots. It turns out that CleanSweep CEO Charles Claussen intends to capture what he deems to be the most undesirable members of society—including homeless people, ex-convicts, and members of the LGBT community—and pack them off to labor camps. His grandfather, he says to his friends at one point, “was an engineer for Hitler, and proud to have helped design many of the camps” who “offered advice on how to avoid the pitfalls, the mistakes both Hitler and Stalin made.” The novel’s greatest strengths are its evocation of the political climate of World War II and its resonance with more recent cultural debates, such as Edward Snowden’s revelations about global surveillance and the rise of far-right politics worldwide. Yet the story loses steam early on, as the heroes uncover Claussen’s diabolical scheme fairly quickly, finding more than enough evidence to attract global attention; one can’t help but wonder why Matt doesn’t promptly notify a major news outlet. Couldn’t his reporter ally, Susan, help him reach out to influencers in the press? “Old-school technology trumps high tech when it comes to avoiding CleanSweep,” one of Matt’s associates informs him, but does it, really? The novel does serve up a number of clandestine coffee shop meetings and anonymous, low-fi cellphone conversations that manage to keep things entertaining, but they mostly serve only to lengthen the story.
A promising thriller with a provocative premise, but one that lets the cat out of the bag a bit too early.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4791-4332-0
Page Count: 312
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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