The team who write under the pseudonym of Cynthia Victor (Only You, 1994, etc.) now join the army of romance writers coupling love with serial murder. Commercial artist Lainey Wolfe, based in Manhattan, covets the life of best friend Farrell Cole. While Lainey toils away drawing cutesy characters like ``Matilda and Mommy'' and ``Patsy Pony,'' Farrell lives with her prosperous lawyer husband and their two swell kids in a picture-perfect home in Connecticut. What more could a girl ask for, thinks Lainey, than glowing fireplaces, a closetful of cashmere dresses, and the aroma of boeuf bourguignon cooking in the kitchen? But, in truth, Farrell is bored with suburban life and longs to recover her adventurous youth. With that in mind, she tries an afternoon as a call girl at a local hotel—a departure from the straight and narrow that leads to disaster: The Coles are found dead in their bed, apparent victims of carbon-monoxide poisoning, and Lainey, through a prearranged agreement, becomes guardian of their children. Though never one for commitments, she moves to Connecticut and begins the difficult switch from single careerwoman to single mom, with two grieving children to care for. She's not helped much by Farrell's sexy brother Penn, a successful TV producer who drinks too much and who's staying in the guesthouse. Penn and Lainey find their fights punctuated both by sexual tension and growing affection. But in romance, no one can live happily ever after while there's a killer loose on the home front. Though the reader knows from the start that the murderer is an overweight neighbor who bakes great cakes, Lainey and her lover are forced to follow an uninventive trail to piece it all out. Much more engrossing than their last outing; still, some attractive characters and believable relationships are done in by an amateur mystery filled with fortunate coincidences and tired clichÇs.
Pub Date: March 25, 1996
ISBN: 0-525-94033-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1996
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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