A lot of intrigue and a lot of characters, which could use some sorting out.
In Dollinger’s debut novel, an ethical lawyer tries to balance career and family while handling a busy caseload.
Ian Elkins, an attorney specializing in landlord/tenant disputes, takes on three additional cases outside of his bailiwick. The first case features a brother and sister who clash over the sizable estate of their deceased mother. In the second case, three children contest their mother’s will, possibly signed under duress, which left everything to their abusive, alcoholic father. Finally, the brother-in-law of Ian’s boss is a loan shark caught between the authorities and the mob; Ian sees what he can do to help as a favor to his boss, Mark Rooney. With a huge cast of characters, some perhaps superfluous, it can be difficult keeping them straight. For example, there are two Herbs with similar last names and two Charlies, plus a Cohen and a Cohan (both lawyers). The author centers the action in the Bronx and establishes two narrative devices—Ian’s Friday-night dinners with extended family and his occasional lunch meetings with Mark—that allow for frequent updates on the principal cases, rendering the exposition in more dynamic, interactive passages. Throughout the novel, Dollinger is curiously attentive to descriptions of food and drink. (Don’t read this book on an empty stomach or while craving an adult beverage.) In fact, by doing so, he establishes an amusing contrast between Ian’s salads and Mark’s unhealthy fare. Dollinger also has an eye for office decor (windows and views—if any—plus furniture, artwork and cleanliness) and what these furnishings imply about the people who own them. In a telling passage, he analyzes one attorney’s choice of a windowless office with fluorescent lighting: “Many of the neighborhood lawyers who occupied stores for their offices used the store front for their desks, since it offered both light and visibility for potential clients. Not Mike: Neither criminal, landlord and tenant, nor personal injury practitioner, he was an estates lawyer; the dignity of his calling would not permit him to expose himself in a window, like an Amsterdam prostitute.” Though this book may not offer the thrills, as its subtitle proclaims, it certainly provides an engaging narrative with a healthy dose of legal intrigue and local color.
A lot of intrigue and a lot of characters, which could use some sorting out.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-938812-21-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Full Court Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
