A small—very small—step up from Saturday morning adventure cartoons.
A super-evil, swarthy zillionaire locks horns with the super-good, fabulously resourceful Kurt Austin (Polar Shift, 2005, etc.) of the National Underwater and Maritime Agency (NUMA).
It seems there has been yet another age-old conspiracy to cover up a truth which would rock the religious world. This tale is based on the possibility that the Phoenicians, master mariners of the ancient world, were repeat visitors to North America, sailing nearly to Harrisburg, Pa., and on the further possibility that one of those voyages involved a treasure so important that it was necessary to secrete the object not far from what would be the Pennsylvania Statehouse, where it might have rested for eternity were it not for the restless curiosity of President Thomas Jefferson, or for the avaricious lust of cruel, present-day international villain Viktor Baltazar. Baltazar has inserted himself into the life and work of fiery, spunky, Italo-Ethiopian UNESCO employee Carina Mechadi, a woman totally and passionately dedicated to the restoration of Iraqi antiquities dispersed in the chaos of war. The ruthless fiend desperately wants his hands on the ancient statue of a Phoenician mariner that Carina plans to exhibit. Baltazar’s brutal efforts to snatch the statue in the middle of the Atlantic put Carina in the way of a Fate Worse Than Death. Fortunately, NUMA’s number one agent Kurt Austin just happens to be in the nautical neighborhood, where he has been lassoing a gigantic iceberg, and he is more than capable of overpowering Baltazar’s goons. Mechadi and Austin, mutually attracted, team up to find out what’s so interesting about that statue, embroiling them in Baltazar’s machinations from the Bosphorus to Chesapeake Bay. Those machinations include tilting on horseback. No kidding.
A small—very small—step up from Saturday morning adventure cartoons.Pub Date: June 5, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-399-15419-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2007
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
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