Lambdin's lusty Royal Naval Lieutenant Alan Lewrie (The King's Commission, 1991, etc.) sails for the East Indies, where French privateers have dared to tamper with the profits of Britain's opium trade. Having at last foiled his father's plot to disinherit him of his mother's fortune, Lt. Lewrie is in London and in the chips, furnishing a flat and enjoying the favors of at least three shameless London ladies while paying semi-serious court to his virtuous colonial girlfriend, Caroline Chiswick. But the life of ease and easy virtue ends abruptly with a call from the Admiralty. Alan's services are needed immediately. He's to join a secret, unofficial mission, sailing with the crew of Telesto, an armed merchantman bound for India, where the august East India Company has fallen victim to French privateering. It's actually not a bad time to leave town: the pretty little housemaid Alan's seduced has announced her pregnancy, and Caroline Chiswick seems unduly interested in matrimony. In India, Alan is reunited with the last man in the world he wants to see—his unspeakable cad of a father, Sir Hugo. But Sir Hugo has gone off the sauce, given up paternal treachery, and returned to soldiering, living the good life in a pocket palace complete with complaisant dancing girls. A reconciliation is effected, and father and son sail for Macao, Canton, the South China Sea, and a series of rousing battles on sea and land with thousands of fierce native pirates and their decadent French masters. Irresistible.
Pub Date: April 29, 1992
ISBN: 1-55611-324-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1992
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
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