The streetcorner murder of a Detroit schoolchild sets off a powder-keg of violence, corruption, and betrayal in this gallery of seamy heroes and seamier losers. Word on the street is that Rickey Jefferson was shot by Julius Caesar Cooper, the notorious killer working for Dickie Broedinger's drug gang, the Satin Knights. But though Cooper was seen with Rickey only a few minutes before his death, the real killer, who shot Rickey thinking he was Cooper, was Shooter, a free-lance hit man working for a gang of the city fathers, including mayor Marty Hatch, prosecutor Sandy Stone, Judge Bill Colbane, and—the real power behind the whole mess—police chief Frank Sims, who'd first talked the others into forming a vigilante squad to make themselves look good. Detective Stan Kochinski, egged on by Free Press reporter Mary Stimic to take a closer look into the killing, gets a call from Broedinger's wife Wendy confirming Cooper's unlikely story that the murder weapon was stolen from him a few weeks back during a romantic interlude in a parked car. But Kochinski doesn't want to rock Sims's boat for fear of what he might do to his wife Marlyss—who happens to be Kochinski's lover. As Sims worries that Judge Colbane will crack under the pressure of covering for Shooter, Cooper comes up for his preliminary hearing before Colbane, who's still looking for revenge for the rape of his treasured daughter Missy, and all hell breaks loose in the courtroom- -though a few of the leads will remain to get dropped in the closing scenes. Kinkopf's gritty vision of the Detroit drug trade is compromised by unremarkable prose and unlikely flashes of hope in the end. Even so, this is one grim first novel.
Pub Date: Jan. 5, 1993
ISBN: 0-399-13772-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1992
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
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