A husband-and-wife pair's first novel in which up-and-coming, moderately honest Manhattan lawyer Alec Anton interrupts his defense of two clients—caught with their hands in the till—to search reluctantly for an alluring neighbor's drug-involved son. Alec's protests that he doesn't do missing persons—he just wants to be left alone to plea-bargain white-collar looters Felix Schwartzberg and Jimmy Gallagher out of prison time—don't stand a chance weighed against his divorced neighbor Lee Hastings's fabulous body, suitably and frequently deployed. But Lee's missing son Noah, barely out of his teens, is big trouble, as even slow-witted Alec gradually realizes: Noah was not only the school chum of Philip Ochoa, scion of the fabulously wealthy Colombian flower-importing family, but also the advance man for the Ochoas' multimillion-dollar American cocaine trade. And when Noah is linked to corporate blue-blood Trumbull Oakes, a pivotal figure in Felix and Jimmy's scam, the chase for the missing boy seems to be heating up. But just then, halfway through, Noah turns up dead—and the story trails off into a deeper mess than Lee's landed Alec in, as his obsessive quest for Noah turns into a series of frantic maneuvers against the bad guys, the police, and his own partners, determined to shut him out—with Lee putting in periodic appearances to remind you why Alec got involved in the first place. In due course: Alec gets seduced by a cocaine-snorting associate in his firm who lodges an affidavit against him; Felix gets blown away; Alec's US attorney buddy Vinny Santorini suppresses Alec's evidence against Oakes and puts the DEA on Alec's tail; Alec sends a copy of the evidence to Ochoa Senior; Oakes gets blown away; and Noah's killer comes after Alec and Lee in a ludicrous finale. Any questions? A feverish fantasia on themes from tormented-attorney fiction and newspaper stories on drugs and financial malfeasance.
Pub Date: Feb. 21, 1992
ISBN: 0-316-35752-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 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
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