Funny, enjoyable caper about a dirty job and the unlikely young woman who takes it on.
New York singleton’s overactive imagination lets loose when she becomes the superintendent of her apartment building.
Former Time Out New York books editor Uviller finds a wealth of material in the local environs explored in her feisty debut about a Greenwich Village native. At 27, Zephyr Zuckerman has already fled medical school and law school. She’s also recently broken up with homicide reporter Hayden Briggs, leaving her free to roam the city with the Sterling Girls, her posse of impossibly lovely, mildly neurotic friends. Returning home from a memorable party-crashing evening, Zephyr finds her super being led off in handcuffs. Parents and neighbors convince her to step in. “Zephy’s going to be the super!” her father proclaims. “I had to go make lemonade. Out of garbage,” thinks his horrified daughter. Surprisingly, impulsive Zephyr finds much to like about her new gig. Among the curiosities begging for her attention are the super’s mysterious apartment (complete with secretive film canisters and a hidden door), her friends’ romantic quandaries and one Gregory Samson, a soft-spoken pest-control agent whom Zephyr is soon determined to make her “sexterminator.” Before you know it, “Chambermaid Zephyr” has morphed into “Agent Zuckerman,” as the author attempts to tie together a tangled plot encompassing art theft, the Spanish mob and a hot-blooded Frenchwoman running a boudoir-based con right under Zephyr’s nose. The plot is overstuffed, and some of Uviller’s secondary characters, particularly the Sterling Girls, lack her heroine’s complexity. Fortunately, she makes up for these deficiencies with a polished lead character, an ear for snappy dialogue and a propulsive storytelling style.
Funny, enjoyable caper about a dirty job and the unlikely young woman who takes it on.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-385-34269-8
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2008
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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