A second satire from Prill (The Unnatural, 1995), who now tries to squeeze humor from the notion that a small Minnesota town has made a tourist attraction out of an annual visit by an anonymous serial killer. Every summer for 21 years, the town of Standard Springs has seen one of its citizens knocked off in grisly fashion by a mysterious murderer—but instead of weeping, the spunky citizenry has made an annual festival of the event. The weeklong celebration kicks off with a 5K Run For Your Life, continues with sold-out performances of the musical The Sound of Maniacs, and culminates with a Scream Queen beauty pageant and a Fear Parade down Main Street on the night the murder takes place. Pretty young Debbie Morning has longed since childhood to become the Scream Queen, but in her last year of competition, at age 18, she realizes it may just be too late. Debbie's problem is that no matter how hard she tries, she can't quite make herself afraid of anything, and her sunny nature shows up only too well in the scream competition that defines the pageant. This year, she enlists aid wherever she can find it—at scary drive-in movies, in a midnight trip to the evil ``Cities,'' even from the ghoulish cousin of her screaming tutor. When nothing works, poor Debbie is inconsolable, until she stumbles across a mysterious stranger, who turns out to be the reclusive Ole Rimbaud, her favorite poet—the man whose work she plans to recite in the talent division of the Scream Queen pageant! Could this scruffy interloper be the serial killer the town has searched for all these years? And if he is, the town elders wonder, might it be better to let him go on killing, so that Serial Killer Days might live? An occasionally amusing send-up of small-town life, but the premise wears thin much too soon.
Pub Date: June 11, 1996
ISBN: 0-312-14411-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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