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Fly Diamonds

Name: Fly Diamonds
Author: A.A. Dober
ISBN: 978-0-9965491-5-8

by A.A. Dober ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 6, 2016

A crime caper with an original idea that falls short on nearly every other level.

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Dober (AmEarth, 2015, etc.) offers a story of familial revenge involving an ingenious diamond heist.

After his father’s death, Juan Luis Merlo lives in San Diego, where he works as a waiter at The Savory Yolk and sends most of his money to his mother in Tijuana, Mexico. Juan blames his family’s misfortune on Tickell Insurance Products Corporation (TIPCO), which fought his father in court for years over a settlement after a fire destroyed his toy factory and his family’s future. After TIPCO delivered a token payment, Juan’s father died. TIPCO then ruled Juan’s father’s accidental death a suicide and refused to pay any life insurance benefits. Juan has spent years concocting the perfect crime to avenge his father, and the plan involves robbing diamonds from TIPCO client Quayles Jewels, using 35 trained carrier pigeons fitted with tiny pouches. On the appointed day, Juan’s plan works flawlessly—except that one of the birds doesn’t make it out of the store. The police then attach a GPS tracker to the pigeon and set it free. This heist tale’s plot moves briskly and is full of surprises. However, it’s marred by poor execution. The dialogue is often improbable; for example, as cops head to the crime scene, one of them says, “Come on, Ivory, somebody could be in danger!” There’s also a lot of telling and not much showing: “He then became extremely guarded and made sure his mom wasn’t in on his plans.” Some word choices are inexplicable (“Cliff swirled past slow cars”) and the Spanish dialogue is accompanied by a complete English translation, rendering it irrelevant. Overall, Dober’s characters are one-dimensional with the single exception of Juan, who has a realistic back story and motivation.

A crime caper with an original idea that falls short on nearly every other level.

Pub Date: April 6, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-9965491-5-8

Page Count: 208

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: March 27, 2018

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
AMEARTH
by A.A. Dober

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ULTIMATUS, A GAMING CORPORATION
by A.A. Dober

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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

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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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.