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
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
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