With help from an unlikely ally, a hard-boiled Israeli battles renascent fascists to a bloody standstill throughout Italy in another (his tenth) slick thriller from Easterman (The Night of the Apocalypse, 1995, etc.) Yosef Abuhatseria, a militant Sephardic Jew who served in one of Israel's elite antiterrorist units and later settled in the Occupied Territories, arrives in Sardinia at the request of his brother-in-law, a hotelier whose son Yoel has been abducted. Aided by Maryam Shumayyil, a comely Arab ÇmigrÇ who serves as his interpreter, the Moroccan-born Yosef manages to rescue the missing child from a mountain hideaway (leaving four bodies behind). There's no reunion, however, because unknown parties have brutally murdered Yoel's parents. After delivering the traumatized youngster to family members in Israel, Yosef is unofficially encouraged by Mossad to delve more deeply into the puzzling case. Further killings and several attempts on his life convince him that he's uncovered crucial pieces of a wide-ranging conspiracy. Having become ardent lovers under the threat of mortal perils, Yosef and Maryam evade their pursuers long enough to reach the mainland, where they join forces with a Jewish self-defense group in Turin. This band of irregulars has been gathering evidence against a revisionist historian on trial for claiming that the Holocaust never happened. His suspicions confirmed, Yosef is drawn into a deadly endgame that pits him against an aging SS officer bent on establishing a new, racially pure Reich throughout Europe. Having survived a lethal encounter with his neo-Nazi foes in the subterranean caverns that underlie Turin, however, Yosef finds that he's no longer capable of virulent hatred—for Palestinians or any other presumptive enemy. At the close, Yosef and Maryam leave for an uncertain future together. An absorbingly far-fetched tale that blends tomorrow-the-world villains with heroic protagonists. Notable for above-average complexities, exotic locales, and a wealth of slam-bang action.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-06-109206-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1996
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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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