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VAULTS OF POWER

Name: VAULTS OF POWER
Author: Diane Echer
ISBN: 978-0984817108

by Diane Echer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 17, 2011

A promising, if flawed, debut for fans of action and intrigue.

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Echer's debut novel is a thriller about a mysterious manuscript and its global, historical reach.

Fans of summer thriller blockbusters should find plenty to like here. The main protagonist, Robyn Gabriel, is clearly established from the outset as a strong, capable and sexually liberated character. She’s a treasure hunter, has a strong relationship with a childhood friend and current business partner and, though estranged from her family, she is willing to drop everything to go to her sister’s aid when she’s in trouble. One of the main antagonists, James McIntyre, is equally well drawn; Echer provides compelling details such as how the powerful VP at the Fed who is trying to acquire a manuscript whose secrets could topple nations also has to deal with a teenage daughter acting out. The story is complicated and can seem sluggish for the first 100 pages as Echer sets all the pieces in motion. But when things are actually moving, the author has a great feel for action and pacing and features some thrilling sequences in compelling locations from European crypts to a library at Yale. But Echer is perhaps too ambitious, and the reader’s threshold for coincidence—finding a caterpillar that only lives during certain seasons on a certain island, McIntyre’s daughter’s college connections—may be tested. Some elements of the final resolution seem to come together too neatly, and one character that pops up at the beginning of the story, disappears and then isn’t heard from until the last couple of pages. Stylistically, Echer often strives for the language of the hardboiled detective genre. It often works, but there are stretches where pronouns are dropped to keep the action flowing where the style becomes distracting. But Echer has a great eye for detail; it’s easy to visualize her characters and their settings, to see the action unfolding. And Echer is adept at choreographing action scenes. She clearly describes what the façade of a building looks like, works that into how a character approaches that building and even describes the smells that greet her characters once they are inside.

A promising, if flawed, debut for fans of action and intrigue.

Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2011

ISBN: 978-0984817108

Page Count: 274

Publisher: Chicoine Editions

Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2012

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.