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PLAYERS

All hell breaks loose in the Texas underworld when two immensely valuable compact disks (containing all-purpose eavesdropping/surveillance programs developed by a covert federal agency) goes missing after a botched highway robbery: a bleak, unsentimental but engrossing thriller from Reynolds (Franklin's Crossing, 1992, etc.). Three years after the fatal CD hijacking (in which he played a fall-guy role that cost him time in a state prison), Eddy Lovell is working for Dallas racketeer Moria Mendle. An unlucky sort whose post-SMU football hopes were dashed by a knee injury, the sometime linebacker cares about little in life other than his daughter Barbara, who was taken from him as an adolescent by his wealthy sister Hillary with the connivance of brother Quincy, a well- connected Houston lawyer. Eddy and Barbara nonetheless manage to maintain phone contact, even after she flees to southern California to escape her domineering aunt. In Houston with Mendle (who's investigating the savage murder of his partner) and a sphinx-like bodyguard, the ex-con learns that Barbara has been abducted at the behest of the corrupt Hillary and Quincy, who are still looking for those priceless CDs. Vicki Sigel, an actress friend of Barbara's, has also been abducted by thugs in search of the CDs, but she proves herself a tough cookie on a wild, homicidal ride from Los Angeles to Balmorhea State Park in west Texas. Eddy's unprincipled siblings and boss head by different routes for a rendezvous at the Park. In a bloody, last-stand windup, armed, dangerous, and desperate players take a heavy toll on one another before G-men (who've infiltrated the ranks of all interested parties) pop out of the underbrush to claim the CDs and ensure everyone left standing gets approximately what's coming to them. A fine, twisty tale of betrayal, crime, and punishment among lowlifes at all socioeconomic levels of the Lone Star State. (Film rights to Daydream Entertainment)

Pub Date: July 14, 1997

ISBN: 0-7867-0407-1

Page Count: 416

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1997

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A LITTLE LIFE

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

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Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.

Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.  

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

Pub Date: March 10, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8

Page Count: 720

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.

Pub Date: July 11, 1960

ISBN: 0060935464

Page Count: 323

Publisher: Lippincott

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960

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