Poyer packs story with both dense technical info and welcome local color. Unique Aisha merits a spinoff series.
Multiple challenges face stalwart Navy lifer Dan Lenson in his first full command.
The eighth installment in Poyer’s adventure saga (Black Storm, 2002, etc.) finds series hero Lenson promoted to Commander and put in charge of a helicopter-capable destroyer, the USS Thomas Horn. A veteran of Desert Storm, Lenson returns to the Persian Gulf in 1992 with an additional mandate, as if the Spruance-class Horn isn’t responsibility enough. Stung by the recent Tailhook scandal, the Navy is accelerating its integration of women into all aspects of service, and the Horn will be the first warship laboratory to test this experiment. Entrenched opposition spans all ranks, although there are also plenty of sailors, like Lenson, who see this integration as the logical next step. New female crewmembers include hardworking GSMFN (gas turbine mechanic fireman) Cobie Kasson, who has left behind a three-year-old daughter, and sassy pals Ina, Lourdes, and Patryce. The crew also boasts some brash Navy SEALs, tasked with intercepting arms being secretly transported to Iraq. The SEALs’ swagger irks the Horn’s resident rooster, Gunner’s Mate Senior Chief Marty Marchetti, who matches them both in brashness and tattoos. Much internal drama ensues aboard ship, including an inconvenient pregnancy, a severed goat’s head, and a suspicious fire in the female quarters, during which Cobie acts admirably. But the multithreaded, episodic plot also travels considerably, from Virginia to various points in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf to Iraq and Egypt and Bahrain, where Aisha Ar-Rahim has spent two years as a special agent for the Navy Criminal Investigative Service. A Harlem-born Muslim, Aisha probes (in a very C.S.I.-esque manner) any crimes that involve Navy personnel. An investigative trail ultimately leads her to the path of the Horn, whose Mideast mission, when suspected, makes it a large target for local enemies.
Poyer packs story with both dense technical info and welcome local color. Unique Aisha merits a spinoff series.Pub Date: June 14, 2004
ISBN: 0-312-31836-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2004
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
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