A page-turning romp with the old standbys: murder, drug addiction, corrupt DEA agents, honest local cops, a lost love, a frame-up, and old-fashioned revenge. Holden fills this debut with enough plot twists to leave your head spinning—just don't look too close, or the whole thing becomes unbelievable. Dr. Adrian Lancaster works the Emergency Room at Morgantown Community General Hospital. Morgantown, a small city 90 miles west of Detroit, was ``solid blue-collar prosperous'' when Lancaster lived there as a child. Then Lancaster left for medical school and a residency in rough-and-tumble Detroit, where he developed ``grief-proof latex skin and a heart of hospital stainless steel'' as well as a major drug dependency, which he shared with his biochemist girlfriend. After he was caught pocketing morphine on the job, he did some time and got clean in rehab. When the love-of-his-life girlfriend didn't get help and died, he realized it was time to become human again and moved back to Morgantown, where the pace is slower and less gruesome. But everything changes when people start getting murdered around town. Each victim shows traces of a strange tan powder (which turns out to be a potent heroin synthetic called Fang that Lancaster's dead girlfriend developed years ago in Detroit). The police begin to suspect the good doctor himself. But Lancaster's being framed, and when he can't figure out why, he returns to the drug-using underworld to find out, confident he can quit using later when he doesn't need it anymore. He gets help pursuing the bad guys from a decent local cop, who has a gut feeling Lancaster's innocent, and from a sweet young addict named Storm, who was a good friend to one of the victims. Predictably, the cop exposes a major federal cover-up and Storm proves less innocent than she appears. A mover, if not a shaker. (Book-of-the-Month Club alternate selection)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-385-31207-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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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