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Debts Are Always Due

Name: Debts Are Always Due
Author: Colin Welles
ISBN: 978-1-5350-2200-2

by Colin Welles ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

A verbose continental adventure, but one with menace, intrigue, and a few pleasant surprises.

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An American businessman tries to save his ex-lover from European criminals in Welles’ debut thriller.

Mike McKenzie had spent some time in Prague after grad school and remembers the time fondly. But he’s surprised to get a phone call one night and find out that his Czech ex-boyfriend, Evžen Srnck, is now in trouble and needs his help; he’s on the run from some gangsters and has fled to Paris. Mike, who’s filled with nostalgia and some degree of desire for Evžen, boards a plane and heads to France. Once there, Mike learns that his ex had been lured into a scheme in which a Czech mafia don gave him money upfront to buy a bar, but then demanded repayment quickly in large installments. An almost broke Evžen escaped from Prague, but the Czechs have sent thugs to Paris to hunt him down. Mike must protect him, and later himself, as they race around Paris in an increasingly dangerous cat-and-mouse game. As Mike falls headfirst into the drama and peril of his ex’s predicament, he and “rent boy” Christophe become lovers. When the mobsters eventually kidnap Evžen, Mike and Christophe team up with Lt. René Jacques of the Paris police to stage a rescue. Welles’ caper is certainly fast-paced and rarely takes a breath as the novel goes on. Through all the calamities, Mike notes that “he’d already seen and done things he wouldn’t have believed himself capable of just twenty-four hours before.” Indeed, the author fills the book with seedy bars, ancient hotels, stashed guns, shady deals, and escapes out windows. The story’s circuitous nature makes it seem somewhat convoluted, long-winded, and a bit repetitive at times. Still, it’s often hair-raising, and it even has time for a few moments of romantic longing.

A verbose continental adventure, but one with menace, intrigue, and a few pleasant surprises.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: 978-1-5350-2200-2

Page Count: -

Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher

Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2016

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- SEEN & HEARD
Salinger Focus of NYPL Exhibit

- SEEN & HEARD
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- APPRECIATIONS
Holden Caulfield: Forever Young

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JURASSIC PARK

by Michael Crichton ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 7, 1990

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Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.