In Stockmar’s latest thriller-romance (Merlin’s Triumph, 2012, etc.), Beau Donahue tries to play matchmaker for her songwriter friend, Melly, who may be targeted for murder.
When best-selling “authoress” Beau invites Melly Foulard on a horse-riding charity event in Colorado, Melly, the Oscar-winning composer, thinks it’s the perfect place to duck the paparazzi. Reporters are hounding Melly not for her work in movies, but because she’s engaged to Hollywood star Dom Michelson. Dom and Melly don’t have much in common, and fortunately, Beau has a replacement guy lined up: Scott McKay, a veterinarian. Melly, however, has other things on her mind, suspecting foul play in the supposed accidental death of her friend Tommy. The man responsible for Tommy’s murder, Joe Vitro, is unsure if Melly knows of his involvement, but just to be safe, he puts a hit out on her. The novel tends to favor romance over thrills. There are notable aspects befitting a thriller: Beau and Melly look so similar that they’re repeatedly mistaken for one another (which doesn’t bode well for Beau, since someone’s gunning for her look-alike), but it’s the blossoming romance between Scott and Melly that fills most of the pages. The novel entertains as a romance, detailing the lives of would-be lovers. This tack, however, diminishes the suspense. Antagonist Hamil Jamoul makes few appearances, and Beau is relegated to a supporting role. Stockmar establishes scenes well with vivid imagery, but the novel overdescribes certain character traits, like Dom’s egotism and Melly’s thin frame, resulting in an excess of anorexia jokes. There are great characters, like Joe, who requests so many “Trips” (Hamil’s term for hits) that it’s amusing, and Scott’s stepdaughter, Megan, who’s just as invested in pairing her father and Melly as Beau. But no one outshines Beau, confident enough to always carry a snub-nosed revolver and sign autographs for people who think she’s Melly.
Thriller fans should anticipate a considerable amount of canoodling, but most will find the protagonist appealing.
Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2011
ISBN: 978-1463705251
Page Count: 494
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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