A gripping but convoluted The Most Dangerous Game meets The Island of Doctor Moreau.
In this debut thriller, a hiker who discovers caged endangered animals becomes trapped himself.
Adirondack backpacker Basil “Baz” Billings is trespassing when he enters a cave and climbs down into a cavern lit by electric lights. From the cavern, he descends further to a series of rooms containing a breeding operation for endangered animals. Baz, who realizes the setup isn’t legit, emerges from the cave to find two men greeting him with shotguns. The pair walk Baz to a luxurious home nearby and throw him in a cage until the “master of the house,” Don Emile, returns. When he does, he suggests Baz join his crew and help breed endangered animals to transport to his private island—“his own personal Madagascar.” Baz rejects the offer. It’s back to the cage for him. He escapes his cell, but before leaving the house, he spies a computer screen displaying detailed information about him and his girlfriend, Jules. He finds additional files he thinks are suspicious before Emile’s toadies catch him. It’s round three in the cage (why don’t they just shoot him?). Baz’s escape attempts are heart-pounding. Hunted through the forest by former captors, the chase ends dramatically, and efforts to involve the cops prove futile. When the FBI gets involved, it appears that the documents on Emile’s computer are linked to several recent suspicious deaths. In retaliation for involving the FBI, Emile’s posse tries to kill Baz and Jules. And it won’t be the last time Baz is in the cross hairs. Threading through the action are soul-lifting descriptions of nature, such as the lusty scents of flowers and the beauty of glossy capped reishi and colorful turkey tail mushrooms. The relationship between Jules and Baz and their individual back stories are highlights, but caging Baz repeatedly grows tiresome, and the elaborateness of Emile’s plans strain credulity.
A gripping but convoluted The Most Dangerous Game meets The Island of Doctor Moreau.Pub Date: March 24, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5144-5670-5
Page Count: 198
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2017
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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