Debut fiction about a hayseed true-crime writer who's in upstate New York to cover a sensational murder trial. He uncovers more than he bargained for in his attempt to fit together the pieces of the victim's life—and ends up falling for the defendant. Before Amerasian Lenore Serian, ``the Black Widow,'' went on trial for killing her volcanic artist husband Bram and torching Arcadia, his sprawling studio, Owen Byrne was writing unpublished short stories in moments stolen from working his family's struggling Kansas ranch. But his agent naturally agrees to send him to Stoatsberg, New York, to gather material for a book on the trial. Owen's wide-eyed innocence gives first-novelist North the opportunity for a primer on all the legal procedures, and if you've never attended a trial or read a book about one, you'll have something to do while you're waiting for Owen—who feels a mysterious kinship to unlovely Bram—to nose out the evidence that draws him into the defense circle's confidence and wins him an exclusive interview with Lenore. Next, building on his information from her and a growing network of contacts, he'll uncover further, darker secrets about Bram's childhood in Kansas (yep, Kansas) with his monstrously abusive father and his adoptive brother Al, who kept returning to Bram's life but mysteriously disappeared after his death; his rescue (or was it an abduction?) of Lenore from Thailand during his tour of Vietnam; and his triumphant years in New York as an unexpectedly gifted sculptor and painter. Meanwhile, Owen will develop problems of his own: Haunted Lenore, who seems to be trying to exorcise Bram from Arcadia, is blowing hot and cold on their torrid romance; and newshound Holly Danielson, stung by his rejection of her own overtures, has smeared the affair all over the tabloids. Painstaking but uniquely uninvolving courtroom scenes, a wildly improbable hero and heroine, and a climactic series of revelations that will surprise only pre-law sophomores.
Pub Date: Sept. 8, 1993
ISBN: 0-525-93634-3
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1993
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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