A crime tale offers some intriguing ideas, but the stiff narrative style makes for an uneven read.
This action-adventure sequel focuses on the war against two cartels in Mexico.
Marnia Gonzalez, daughter of the Mexican president, is inspired by the bravery of Jacob Edwards of the U.S. Coast Guard when he saves her from an attack on a cruise ship. She resolves to reject her life of privilege and do something to help stop the crime ravaging her country. After her training, she is assigned to the Anti-Cartel Task Force led by Col. Antonio Ramirez. That puts her in the middle of the uneasy truce between the Manerez and Santiago cartels, the two most powerful operations dealing in drugs, weapons, and other illegal activities. Marnia quickly becomes the public face of the task force when she rescues some children from Santiago’s traffickers with the help of connected hotel owner Rosemary Sargent. Marnia uses her strength and intelligence as well as her family connections to fight the cartels and the Russian money launderer Boris, who is working behind the scenes. On an assignment in northern Mexico, Marnia’s job gets more complicated when she discovers her family is involved in the corruption, and she finds an unexpected ally in Jonathan Manerez, son of Maximillian, head of the Manerez cartel. Marnia’s rise from rich kid to crime-fighting heroine provides for an intriguing tale, and Hendrickson (The Good Fight, 2018, etc.) has surrounded her with a strong cast of characters. There are some captivating concepts—a cattle charge against one of the cartel’s armies later in the book is an especially nice touch. But the author’s narrative voice is flat, and much of the story reads like a summary. In Chapter 1, Hendrickson writes of Marnia: “The horror she endured on the cruise ship dramatically and irreversibly changed her life.” Readers don’t get to see that firsthand; they are merely told about it. Similarly, when she begins her training, the author writes that “she asserted herself as a natural leader and talented military strategist” but shows none of that development.
A crime tale offers some intriguing ideas, but the stiff narrative style makes for an uneven read.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9994509-4-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Blurb
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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