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NIGHT OF THE SEVENTH DARKNESS

A dark and disturbing foray into voodoo-terror by a master of the religious-conspiracy thriller (The Brotherhood of the Tomb, 1990; The Ninth Buddha, 1989, etc.). From the opening pages, in which Haitian-born heroine Angelina Hammel finds a host of corpses hidden beneath the floorboards of her Brooklyn apartment, Easterman spins a morbid tale of unrelenting evil that's a far and eerie cry from the high adventure of his earlier work. In sinuous prose tinged with despair, the horrors pile up: one body is trapped in a living death—a zombi?; Angelina's ethnologist husband, Rick, is found murdered and mutilated in a nearby park; Reuben Abrams, the cop assigned to Angelina, uncovers a weird sanctum of evil beneath the Brooklyn waterfront, full of spiders, more bodies, the mummy of a sorcerer, and half of a golden disc. This disc, Abrams learns, is the talisman of the Seventh Order, a reactionary, voodoo-based global conspiracy that includes ``senators, judges, industrialists,'' and that prophesies ``the resurrection of all things when the true king'' sits on his voodoo throne. Members of the Order soon give violent chase to Angelina, whom they rightly believe holds information—derived from her husband's research—threatening to the Order. The brutal murder of Abrams's parents (partly repaid by the cop with a syringe through the assassin's eyeball) is only one atrocity of many as the duo, aided by a secret federal anti-Order cabal, fend off attack. Prompted by the cabal, Abrams and Angelina, now uneasy lovers, fly to the Order's homeground, Haiti—where the action turns darker still, a febrile shock-scape of voodoo ceremonies, torture, and death (and one whiff of Easterman past—an extraneous but rousing escapade during a hurricane) that ends in the bleakest possible way. More horror novel than thriller, grim and unforgiving, and resonant with menace, decay, and the stuff nightmares are made of.

Pub Date: Sept. 11, 1991

ISBN: 0-06-017928-7

Page Count: 480

Publisher: HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1991

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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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MAGIC HOUR

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

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