Colombian druglords try to ship a billion in cash from Las Vegas to Mexico. The CIA, DEA, and FBI deploy dozens, spend millions, and launch the very latest in superspy ultralight planes to keep the money at home and teach the bad guys a lesson. Ing took technothrills to the tropics previously in The Ransom of Black Stealth One (1989). The technogizmo this time is Nemesis, a featherweight spy plane commissioned by the Coast Guard, capable of coasting on station miles above the earth for weeks at a time to keep an eye on the drug trade. Loaded with exceptionally keen-eyed TV cameras, computer-generated maps, and all the comforts of home, Nemesis is just one in Ing's enormous cast of characters that also includes confused vacationers, tiny pilots, FBI agents disguised in double- knit and drag, a Mormon archaeologist with an Indiana Jones complex, mystical Indians, and Peru's Shining Path guerrillas. All these interesting people and gadgets come together when the Colombian druglords—who have moved their operations to southern Mexico, taking with them the mad mountain Maoists—seek to solve their cash-flow problems by stuffing a billion in ill-gotten American gains in an ancient propjet. The plane is to be camouflaged with a load of unwitting Americans expecting a free flight to look at Mexican condos. American intelligence, however, is onto the plan from the beginning and implements a sting to divert the loot and thwack the Colombians where they live. The extraordinarily complex plan requires a stunt-double propjet, two of the wonderful spy planes, and the cooperation of a few culturally pre-Colombian Mayans. The enormous cast can be confusing, and the setup takes extraordinarily long—but the tone is light, the gimmickry supports the fun, and the chase, when it comes, is a ripsnorter.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-312-85105-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1991
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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