Loaded with B-movie appeal.
A Navy pilot can handle anything that flies, but falls hard for a Hollywood blonde with an overprotective—and mobbed-up—father.
In this breathless adventure, Vincent (Mafia Summer, 2006) brings back hero Vinny Vesta, but this time he’s gotten his tough-guy protagonist out of New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen and into the Navy. It’s 1957 and Vesta is a pilot and lieutenant, stationed in Jacksonville, Fla. His first assignment, escorting the body of a fellow pilot across the country, is a dreary one. But once he signs over the coffin to the beautiful widow, Kat Pennington, his prospects pick up. Following a torrid weekend of sex and booze, they agree to meet again. But there’s a catch: Kat’s overprotective father doesn’t want her matched with a Navy man again. He’d rather set her up with a high-profile movie star, in the hope of furthering her career. When the couple persists, he gets rough, using hired thugs to kidnap Kat. Vesta, with Mafia connections of his own, reaches back to his New York roots for assistance. The real-life Mafia machinations of that year, with Vito Genovese killing Albert Anastasia to assume power over the New York mob, serve as backdrop, the changing alliances putting more pressure on both Vesta’s friends and Kat’s father. Neither Vesta nor his beloved ever move beyond cardboard caricatures. He’s the handsome fighter pilot who can drink nonstop but still expertly maneuver fighter jets the next morning. She’s flawlessly beautiful and sincere. Vesta’s friends back in New York speak in Brooklyn accents, employ lots of curse words and slurp up giant meals of pasta and veal. And the initial hook—Vesta’s colleague’s mysterious death—is never resolved. Still, with all the action and Vincent’s breezy prose, this time-capsule cartoon is entertaining.
Loaded with B-movie appeal.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59691-389-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
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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