A fast-paced crackerjack tale, solidly plotted and a pleasure to read.
A team of adventurers searches through time for a missing Nobel prizewinner.
Former Army Intelligence operative Bill Culloden is asked by hedge-fund manager Jonah Markowitz to find physicist Henry Bryson, who was working on a trading algorithm to beat the markets. Along with Markowitz’s son, Ray, Culloden heads to Boston to question Bryson’s wife, Juliet, who discloses that she and her husband became millionaires—by sending buy orders for Walmart and Cisco back in time. It seems Bryson is dead—he died around 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem on a time-travel mission gone awry. After obtaining Bryson’s exact coordinates at his death, Culloden, Markowitz, archaeologist Dr. Robert Lavon and lovely Sharon Bergfield head back to the Jerusalem of Jesus’ time, where they encounter some lethally efficient Roman soldiers not completely convinced by their back story. The team crosses paths with Pilate, Herod and Jesus, as they fight to survive in a time of leprosy, torture, gladiator combat and crucifixion—and possibly corroborate the resurrection, if they live long enough. Among the book’s strengths, and there are many, is placing the reader at the scene of the days surrounding one of the most significant events in our history. The author creates scene after scene of people taking care of everyday business—bathing, preparing food, conducting religious ceremonies, caring for the sick. Another plus is a cast of characters motivated by the joy of discovery, rather than money, lust, fame or any of the typical self-serving interests. While the plot incorporates events surrounding Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion, the tale never dissolves into a simple retelling of the Gospels. Once the action starts, it never lets up until the final page. Some nifty state-of-the-art gadgets would do James Bond proud, including an ear-bud all-language translator and a bandage that, after healing near-fatal wounds, disappears into the flesh. Although the story unfolds from Culloden’s viewpoint, this is an ensemble play, requiring that each character eventually take center stage. It all comes together beautifully for a satisfying, nick-of-time conclusion.
A fast-paced crackerjack tale, solidly plotted and a pleasure to read.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0983841128
Page Count: 396
Publisher: David M. Epperson
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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