A grim '90s noir caper by the celebrated ex-con author of Little Boy Blue (1981), etc. Troy Cameron is a savvy, good-looking sociopath whose career goal is to be an outlaw with a lifetime income. Diesel Cameron, a tight friend he made at reform school, has a wife, a son, and a job with the teamsters that doesn't involve anything more serious than breaking legs and torching the occasional truck. Mad Dog McCain, the faithful companion who once got himself tossed into the hole to save Troy's parole, solves tough problems by killing the people who pose them. When Troy gets sprung from San Quentin, the three of them—their loyalties overriding but not mitigating their wary distrust of each other—team up in hopes of pulling a job that will get them out of the loop for good. It's a pipe dream, of course. Figuring that the best victims are criminals who can't run to the police, Troy and his buddies kidnap a baby druglord and force him to turn over a fat stash to them, as the dialogue bristles and the action crackles with authenticity. But a second kidnapping—snatching a major smuggler's infant as collateral for an uncollectible debt the smuggler owes a trafficker now lording it over a Mexican prison—goes wrong in a horrifyingly funny way, and the three conspirators find themselves on the run, wanted by every cop in California, and predictably at odds with each other. Throughout this brutal catalog of crimes, Bunker has his own axe to grind—the insanity of a three-strikes law that makes any two-time loser willing to kill to avoid being picked up on the smallest felony charge—but what lingers in the memory is the single-mindedness of his doomed hoodlums, who can't focus on anything but survival, revenge, and the big score. A jolt of frozen adrenaline, relieved only by the walk-ons of the latest accomplices and victims.
Pub Date: Aug. 13, 1996
ISBN: 0-312-14314-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1996
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
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
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