Excellent amusement—Georgette Heyer for the gents.
A bothersome death sentence interrupts the adventures of dashing Georgian naval hero Alan Lewrie, but not for long. Action resumes in the Bay of Biscay.
Now a post-captain with a lovely new ship, Savage, freshly snatched from the French and newly rigged for action, Lewrie, in his 14th adventure (A King’s Trade, 2006, etc.), is itching to put to sea. What’s stopping him is a spot of legal trouble. Big trouble, actually. The Jamaican plantation owner whose slaves Lewrie liberated when he was last in the Caribbean has ramrodded a trial through the island courts and obtained a death sentence for Alan in absentia. Ludicrous as the charge may be (the slaves were unsurprisingly eager to liberate themselves) and rotten as the Jamaican court proceedings may have been, the islanders have legal rights in the British courts. Poor Alan is at the mercy of his sprightly young Scottish barrister, whose taste for expensive restaurants makes deep inroads into the Captain’s recently acquired fortune. To complicate matters, Sophie, Alan’s delectable ward, is about to be wed to one of Lewrie’s former First Officers, another exceptionally costly event. And his American wife Caroline has been receiving detailed anonymous letters about Alan’s indiscretions, to which she gives credence. What a relief, then, to get through the trial (verdict to be announced much later) and the wedding (great event, but Caroline is not mollified) and sail off to the French Atlantic coast where His Majesty’s navy has sealed up the ports and throttled most of the commerce. Happy to find that he has increased authority and a handful of other ships to get adventurous with, Captain Lewrie takes a look at the vulnerabilities of Bonaparte’s local seaports and stretches what could have been a soporific assignment into a splendid dustup. All this is told in Lambdin’s usual mannered but amusing version of Regency English, which slows the pace, but not disagreeably.
Excellent amusement—Georgette Heyer for the gents.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-34805-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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