Well up to Poyer’s excellent standards. No bluster, no dazzle, just real naval engagements that we may well see before long.
American observers sail into the thick of a vicious naval confrontation between the two Koreas.
Naval expert Poyer (The Threat, 2006, etc.) has already sent his hero Dan Lenson through nine realistic and frightening naval crises. They are always plausible situations, often in remote spots that are overshadowed by whatever big trouble the United States is in at the moment. This time the Medal of Honor–winner has been reassigned from his White House post to what appears to be lousy duty in the Western Pacific. Denied the command post he richly deserves, Commander Lenson is part of a team running joint U.S. and Korean Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) exercises in the waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan. Straight shooter that he is, Lenson throws himself totally into the job, coming quickly to respect the seamanship and dedication of the South Korean naval officers. Within a short time, he learns that the threat from North Korea is no joke. The weird totalitarians under their Dear Leader have been sending suicidal submarine crews to make mischief in southern waters even as the United States is secretly preparing to drastically reduce its forces in the area. On a break in Seoul, he participates in one of the spooky evacuation drills the Republic finds it necessary to run regularly to be ready for what they believe is an inevitable invasion from the North. Back at sea he rides out a typhoon and helps the Korean Commodore cope with the withdrawal of the Australian and American ships from the exercise. He has his own problem coping with the chain-smoking Koreans and the constipating shipboard diet. Then the ASW exercise becomes the real thing. Four of Kim Jong-Il’s subs and a second typhoon move into the area with murderous intent, and atomic radiation has been detected.
Well up to Poyer’s excellent standards. No bluster, no dazzle, just real naval engagements that we may well see before long.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-312-36049-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2007
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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