Olivia sums up the richly readable appeal: “Sinning. In such a magical, wholesome place. Good stuff.”
Asher’s (It’s a Calamity, Jane, 2015, etc.) signature character, “bad-ass grafter gal” Olivia, resurfaces in theme-park mecca Orlando, Florida, this time to recruit a former mark for help in conning a millionaire.
Jack Maxwell, a former “big-time hustler…and part-time scammer,” is currently the discontented manager of a faux Irish bar. Years before, he introduced Olivia to the life, but she ended up scamming him for about $15,000 before she disappeared. Now, she’s back with Jillian, an enigmatic and mostly silent partner, and needs a couple more players for a plan that involves “High yield, low risk. No cops. Some millionaire….Twenty percent each.” The millionaire: Jerry Mallore. The pitch: a real estate deal. To reveal more would be criminal, but Asher deftly moves “from the basic to the complex” without the reader feeling cheated when the final twists unfurl. As the con goes down, time shifts wring maximum payoff from scenes that alternate between planning, execution, and the inevitable best-laid-plans fiasco. Asher’s spare writing has real flair, as in a confrontation with unforeseen rival scammers: “Grant took a step toward them, trying to intimidate. But that wouldn’t work. Olivia and Jillian both stood confident. Easy to do, Olivia feeling her Glock 39 resting against her back, stuck into the waist of her dress skirt.” Asher is a gripping storyteller; what he leaves to the imagination (in one tense episode, for instance, a “scuffle” among the principals) is as compelling as the con’s shifting and uncertain alliances. Dialogue has real snap, too, as when Olivia first sees Jack in his themed-bar costume. “My, oh my, look at you. You’ve gone and gotten yourself all Irish.” Readers don’t need to be familiar with the characters’ previous exploits—Olivia Jane Doe (2013) and Damage Day, Fla (2014)—to be thoroughly entertained by this new caper. But newcomers who, like Jack, love “watching Olivia do her thing” will surely want to go back and catch up on what they missed.
Olivia sums up the richly readable appeal: “Sinning. In such a magical, wholesome place. Good stuff.”Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-145754-067-7
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 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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