Dorsey's (The Force, 1994) fiction debut is a slick fable about the increasingly high cost of realizing the American dream. One typically hectic day, Rich Cahill (an overworked, underpaid account executive at a midsized ad agency in Rochester, New York) and his 12-year old son Alec are caught up in a holdup at their local McDonald's. While Rich (who's relieved of his wallet in the confusion) gets a good look at the all-black crew of bandits, he's curiously reluctant to cooperate with the police. A county cop nonetheless nabs one of the gang, a teenage athlete named Will Breedlove. The cop prevails on Rich to cooperate in an informal rehabilitation project that has Will tutoring an enthusiastic Alec on the finer points of basketball. Before long, Rich is being financially enticed by Eugene Price, the man who staged the fast- food robbery as a rite of passage for young hoods eager to work for his upstate drug dealership. At the same time, he's under round- the-clock pressure on a job that has yet to earn him rewards commensurate with his efforts. Nor is his crowded home a refuge for him (he's the product of a dysfunctional family from the wrong side of the tracks). Indeed, after ferrying their two kids about, he and Meg, his art-gallery-owner wife, scarcely have a moment for each other. Rich agrees to run a one-shot errand for Price, which nets him money enough to build his dream house in a tonier neighborhood. At the close, a confident and independent Rich is considering an offer from the savvy Price (now completely out of the narcotics trade) to join him in a legitimate, lucrative venture involving ethnic radio stations. A well-told tale that works both as a suspenseful and cautionary take on unfamiliar forms of white-collar crime and as an absorbing account of the suburban life and its discontents. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-670-87471-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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