Second-novelist Rosenbaum (the Edgar-nominated Zaddik, 1993) returns with a tightly placed story of thieves, double-crosses, and the Russian mafia. Sasha is a likable con man who's left Mother Russia for New York City's the ÇmigrÇ community of Brighton Beach. His hustles include everything from babies for shady adoptions to phony Small Business Administration Loans. Then Boris, an old friend from Russia, arrives—and is promptly murdered, in front of Sasha. Sasha flees the scene, taking the antique box Boris was supposed to deliver to a third party. Thinking Boris's death is linked to the box, he hides it at the apartment of Maddy Malloy, a newspaper reporter working on the story of the murder. She knows that Sasha has stashed it in her closet, but she's fallen for him. The murder investigation ties Boris and Sasha to organized crime, plus Maddy realizes that almost everything Sasha has told her was untrue, and still she lies to the police and her editor about her relationship with him—and the location of the mystery box. Meantime, Sasha has fled to Russia to get away from whoever killed Boris. There, he discovers that the box contained Russian uranium, and that the buyer was the CIA (which is trying to keep former Soviet supplies away from bad-guy nations). Sasha returns to the US to recover the uranium, but by this time a whole lot of folks have the same idea: former KGB agents, the CIA, two sets of Russian Mafioso, and various freelance thugs. And most of them target Maddy, thanks to Sasha. Further complicating life is the search for a hidden cache of art, valuable in its own right as well as being a means to smuggle future shipments of uranium. Fast, intriguing, and often violent. Even when he's a jerk, you'll find yourself pulling for Sasha. (Author tour)
Pub Date: July 5, 1995
ISBN: 0-89296-591-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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