A predictable, entertaining story stuffed with espionage morsels.
In Seaver’s thriller, the CIA seems to have a targeted a man whose brother, missing for decades, may have stashed incriminating evidence.
Desalination plant engineer Matthew Grant is anxious when two men from Backchannel Security, at the CIA’s behest, show up at his door asking about his brother Mark. Matthew tells them that he hasn’t seen Mark since his return from Vietnam in 1961—22 years ago. The engineer goes on the offensive and teams up with TV foreign correspondent Robin Baxter to expose the CIA’s reputed illicit drug activity in Afghanistan. When Matthew evades the men following him, the baddies assume that he’s hiding Mark’s whereabouts and go after the one person Matthew’s trying his best to protect—his 16-year-old daughter, Caroline. In his debut novel, Seaver dabbles in spies, rogue agents, and international affairs and continually maintains suspense. Readers know more than the characters, but even when the narrative reveals Mark’s post-Nam fate, there’s much more that will gradually unfold—all the way until the very last doozy of a sentence. Regardless, intended surprises don’t always succeed; readers will likely catch up with the story faster than the author intended, and some will also guess the plot twists. Matthew may not be a spy, but his job affords him Middle Eastern contacts who, along with his FBI pal, help him gather intel on the people after him and his brother. Seaver provides a good amount of insight into Mark via his Vietnam letters to Matthew. On the spy front, there are a few shootouts, including one in a McDonald’s parking lot; an abduction; and more. There’s also a love triangle that’s teased early on but unfortunately never comes to fruition.
A predictable, entertaining story stuffed with espionage morsels.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1610091565
Page Count: 302
Publisher: Dark Oak Mysteries
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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