Another capable and rousing Western action tale from Hamlett.
In this latest adventure starring John Lee Johnson, the hero and his friends tangle with hired killers, a crooked bounty hunter, a sinister clan bent on mayhem—and questions of innocence and redemption.
Though he failed to kill Johnson in Hamlett’s (John Lee Johnson: Both Barrels Blazing, 2015, etc.) last Western novel, Frank McGrew is still committed to revenge and hatches an even bigger plan this time, recruiting a small army of hired gunslingers. While these killers converge, Johnson captures some criminals with bounties on their heads. This exposes him both to the allies of the culprits and to the shady bounty hunter who had solid plans for what he was going to buy with the loot—and isn’t about to let anyone stop him. While Johnson faces off against the gunslingers stalking him, his friends Seth Johnson and Floyd Maccabee deal with the fallout from an outlaw attack on a town, including taking care of several orphans and running across a mild-mannered clerk who is suspiciously good with a gun. As with previous installments in the series, Johnson is presented as such a paragon of Western skills and virtues—“He ain’t like any man I’ve ever seen,” says one admiring woman—that there isn’t that much suspense about the outcome. In that way, readers may be reminded of James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, and other iconic heroes, where the pleasure of the tale is found not in suspense over the outcome but in how they get there. And as with Hamlett’s other books, some of the thrill here is in the side characters, who are drawn with humor and humanity: readers see a wicked patriarch burst into tears over deaths in his family and hear of one pugnacious fellow who would “fight at the drop of a hat and drop his own hat.” Even when Johnson wrestles with the question of his conscience, the outcome isn’t really in doubt. The focus remains on his exploits and legend rather than on a modernist exploration of psychology.
Another capable and rousing Western action tale from Hamlett.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4582-2074-5
Page Count: 264
Publisher: AbbottPress
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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