Vengeful Japanese cowboy/industrialist seeks to build A-bomb; vengeful American cowboy/agent seeks to thwart same—in this expert rouser from dependable Hagberg (Countdown, 1990; Crossfire, 1991). After losing his parents in Hiroshima and his wife and daughter in Nagasaki, Isawa Nakamura resurfaces decades later as a self-made computer kingpin with the clout to take out three inconvenient CIA men on a Swissair jetliner with a surface-to-air missile. Also aboard is Marta Fredericks, girlfriend of retired Company op Kirk McGarvey, who goes on a cold-killing rampage. Nakamura's goons kill American agents by the carload, kidnap McGarvey's estranged wife Kathleen and adoring daughter Elizabeth, and use them as bait in a killing trap—since they naturally know who's on their trail and how fearsome he is. There must be a hundred killers, armed with the latest high-tech weaponry, arrayed against McGarvey, but they haven't got a prayer. (As Elizabeth ``confidently'' tells a kidnaper: ``My father is going to tear you a new asshole, sweety.'') Nothing can stop McGarvey: certainly not the French and American spooks set on his trail (he thumbs his nose at them, then signs on under his own terms), or a CIA info blackout (a Twinkie-loving hacker lets him in the back door), or the trap set by chief henchmen Ernst Spranger and icy lesbian temptress Liese Egk (McGarvey shrugs off the Navy SEALS dispatched to the Greek islands to help him—they naturally blunder into the trap in his place—and takes out the last thug with his last bullet), or the resulting wounds, which are supposed to keep him bedridden—and the bomb assembly thereby on track—for six weeks (he's en route to Japan two days later for the equally predictable showdown). Japan-bashing at its most cartoon-heroic, written with an eye for the fast clichÇ. Not really good for you, or for international relations, but there's no point in fighting Hagberg's crudely effective force.
Pub Date: June 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-312-85255-X
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1992
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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