Clunky Clancy-esque government insider tale of an attempted Washington coup d'etat and the brooding Green Beret who stops it, by a former US foreign-policy analyst. After a well-received biography of Cold Warrior Paul Nitze (Dangerous Capabilities, 1990) and a foreign policy primer (Between Two Worlds, not reviewed), this fictional turn from Callahan, resident scholar at the Twentieth Century Fund, suffers from tediously predictable plotting and prose that begs for a salvo of editorial smart bombs: The desirable gal Friday of one of the book's half-dozen villains ``slung barbs with pursed lips and responded to attacks with either slashing wit or feminine pouting. Everything about her was inviting.'' Special Forces Lieutenant Zach Turzin, having just won the Congressional Medal of Honor for leading a commando raid into Iraq, is recruited to the staff of Admiral Jeff Forsten, the blustering, right-wing vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff whose spirited lust for combat during the Vietnam War cloaks a history of covert heroin smuggling and arms trading. Forsten introduces Turzin to Douglas Sherman, a wealthy, failed presidential candidate whose shadowy relations with Hong Kong businessman Donald Chen and terrorist chieftan Sheik Abdul Tabrata would make any remotely intelligent American officer quit the corps. Persuading himself that these just might be decent fellows, Turzin, who gets nightmares about his best buddy's tragic death back in Iraq, beds Justine, Sherman's barb-slinging mistress, while, in Oman, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is murdered in an apparent terrorist attack. Hoping to disprove nasty rumors about Forsten's complicity, Turzin finds Forsten and company heading a complicated conspiracy aimed at wiping out most of the executive and legislative branches of government by blowing up the Capitol during the State of the Union address. Cautionary, ineptly written Pentagon procedural weighed down by flabby characterizations, limp dialogue, and a pile of mangled corpses. (Film rights to MGM)
Pub Date: June 2, 1997
ISBN: 0-316-12490-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
A fine first novel that enlivens familiar themes of parenthood and battles against nature.
A couple struggling to settle in the Alaskan wilderness is heartened by the arrival of the child of their dreams—or are they literally dreaming her?
Jack and Mabel, the protagonists of Ivey’s assured debut, are a couple in their early 50s who take advantage of cheap land to build a homestead in Alaska in the 1920s. But the work is backbreaking, the winters are brutally cold and their isolation only reminds them of their childlessness. There’s a glimmer of sunshine, however, in the presence of a mysterious girl who lurks near their cabin. Though she’s initially skittish, in time she becomes a fixture in the couple's lives. Ivey takes her time in clarifying whether or not the girl, Faina, is real or not, and there are good reasons to believe she’s a figment of Jack and Mabel’s imaginations: She’s a conveniently helpful good-luck charm for them in their search for food, none of their neighbors seem to have seen the girl and she can’t help but remind Mabel of fairy tales she heard in her youth about a snow child. The mystery of Faina’s provenance, along with the way she brightens the couple’s lives, gives the novel’s early chapters a slightly magical-realist cast. Yet as Faina’s identity grows clearer, the narrative also becomes a more earthbound portrait of the Alaskan wilderness and a study of the hard work involved in building a family. Ivey’s style is spare and straightforward, in keeping with the novel’s setting, and she offers enough granular detail about hunting and farming to avoid familiar pieties about the Last Frontier. The book’s tone throughout has a lovely push and pull—Alaska’s punishing landscape and rough-hewn residents pitted against Faina’s charmed appearances—and the ending is both surprising and earned.
A fine first novel that enlivens familiar themes of parenthood and battles against nature.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-316-17567-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
When a book has such great comic timing, it's easy to finish the story in one sitting.
A toxic workplace nurtures an intoxicating romance in Lauren’s (The Unhoneymooners, 2019, etc.) latest.
Rusty and Melissa Tripp are the married co-hosts of a successful home-makeover show and have even published a book on marriage. After catching Rusty cheating on Melissa, their assistants, James McCann and Carey Duncan, are forced to give up long-scheduled vacations to go along on their employers' book tour to make sure their marriage doesn’t implode. And the awkwardness is just getting started. Stuck in close quarters with no one to complain to but each other, James and Carey find that the life they dreamed of having might be found at work after all. James learns that Carey has worked for the Tripps since they owned a humble home décor shop in Jackson, Wyoming. Now that the couple is successful, Carey has no time for herself, and she doesn’t get nearly enough credit for her creative contribution to their media empire. Carey also has regular doctor’s appointments for dystonia, a movement disorder, which motivates her to keep her job but doesn’t stop her from doing it well. James was hired to work on engineering and design for the show, but Rusty treats him like his personal assistant. He’d quit, too, but it’s the only job he can get since his former employer was shut down in a scandal. Using a framing device similar to that of Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies, the story flashes forward to interview transcripts with the police that hint at a dramatic ending to come, and the chapters often end with gossip in the form of online comments, adding intrigue. Bonding over bad bosses allows James and Carey to stick up for each other while supplying readers with all the drama and wit of the enemies-to-lovers trope.
When a book has such great comic timing, it's easy to finish the story in one sitting.Pub Date: March 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3864-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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