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12 DRUMMERS DRUMMING

Name: 12 DRUMMERS DRUMMING
Author: Diana Deverell
ISBN: 0-380-97610-2

by Diana Deverell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 1998

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Deverell, a former US Foreign Service officer, debuts with a not-so-thrilling thriller that takes its cue from 1988’s Lockerbie airline disaster. The opening premise is a promising one: a young woman, Casey Collins’she too a US Foreign Service Officer—faces the possibility that her lover might have been the inadvertent cause of a wrenching tragedy. She believes the bomb that blew up Global Flight 500 over Scotland was planted with him in mind—and that vengeful terrorists did it: Stefan Krajewsky, Polish operative for Danish Intelligence, and a counter-terrorist of the first magnitude (as well as Casey’s lover), had to be neutralized. That, she suspects, was the terrorist position, not softened in the least by the fact that 226 others accompanied their target. Anguished, then angry, Casey sets out to take her own revenge, and good thrillers have had worse launching pads. But they also tend to have better protagonists. Casey, to put it plainly, is a drag, an obstacle to empathy. It’s often difficult to take seriously a heroine whose dialogue is so often purple-tinged: —In some primitive corner of my soul, I knew—I knew—I belonged with him.— And she’s whiny, a real trial to her friends. As they band together to track down the evil genius at work, they—re forced to cope with what can seem like incessant complaining about one or another relatively minor bugbear. The truth is exasperating. So much so that when the plot turns on the need to thwart a master plan involving the simultaneous destruction of 12 commercial airliners (and on the 12th day of Christmas, no less), it’s just one more thing that you—re inclined not to take very seriously. Begins well, then crashes.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-380-97610-2

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1998

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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CARRIE

by Stephen King ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 1974

King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...

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Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).

All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.

King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."

Pub Date: April 8, 1974

ISBN: 0385086954

Page Count: 216

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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NEVER FLINCH
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YOU LIKE IT DARKER
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- PERSPECTIVES
Appreciations: Carrie Turns 40

- SEEN & HEARD
Stephen King Used ‘Carrie’ Advance To Support Mom

- BOOK TO SCREEN
New ‘Carrie’ Series in the Works at Amazon

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.