Psycho punk kidnaps politico's runaway daughter: a second case for Philadelphia cop Patrick Paige (Skeletons, 1990). The punk is a lowlife movie buff named Bobby Radcliff, and he's bad news: a guy who slips an extra 50 dollars (``why not?'') into the payoff envelopes of the two kids who helped him rob a liquor store moments before he shoots them. But one of them, Tim Cochran, gets away, and Bobby's out searching South Philly for him when he runs into Kimberly Morbach, who's just run out on State Senator James Morbach and his ineffectual wife Susan. Bobby buys her dinner, takes her home, and shoots her so full of dope that she takes a week to come down (and never does come down very far). In the meantime, as Paige is combing the alleys for Tim, who can identify Bobby, Bobby has had time to get in touch with Jacob Cross, Morbach's political crony, for whom he'd once shot an unofficial Candid Camera sex video, and amoral Cross begins to weigh his loyalties and his self-interest. Sauter's especially good at calibrating a wide range of depravity, and it's no surprise when the uncle Tim runs home to beats him and leaves him for dead, or when Susan Morbach tries to swipe the ransom money from her husband's undeclared slush fund, or when Senator Morbach turns out to be the slimiest operator of all. Though the plot is familiar, each nasty little revelation registers another jolt. Paige's second appearance is not quite as tense or gritty as Skeletons, but very few cop/psycho thrillers are. More, please.
Pub Date: Sept. 8, 1992
ISBN: 0-525-93483-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
Bleak, stately, terrifying, and moving: It's not just the wonderful story and completely original, perfectly American...
A handsome young psychopath begins a spree of train robbery and murder in the West Texas border country, and the victimized railroad hires the legendary Ranger Captain Woodrow Call, aging hero of McMurtry's Lonesome Dove, to stop him.
Gabby, funny Gus McCrae is in his grave, but years later other veterans of McMurty's epic cattle drive live on. Woodrow Call is nearly an old man, still maintaining his reputation as the greatest manhunter in the West. Living nearby, Pea-Eye, Call's old corporal, is a farmer married to Lorena, the gracefully fading beauty who once worked as a prostitute. Pea-Eye and Lorena, the only teacher at the little local school, have five children. Captain Call's final manhunt begins with orders from Colonel Terry, president of the railroad whose trains have been knocked off and passengers murdered by coldblooded Joey Garza. Call summons Pea-Eye to ride with him as he has always done, but Pea-Eye, who almost desperately loves his farm and family and who is beginning to feel his age, refuses the Captain for the first time in his life, and Call has to begin his hunt with no help other than that of Mr. Brookshire—the Brooklyn accountant Col. Terry sent to mind his money. The manhunt is almost immediately complicated by the return of Mox Mox, a murderous pervert who likes to torture and burn his victims. Mox Mox is working the same territory as Joey Garza, a beat also patrolled by the gunslinger John Wesley Harding. It's really more than Call can handle, no matter how quickly the terrified Mr. Brookshire loses his city-bred helplessness. As Call slowly tracks Garza, Maria (Garza's mother) sets out to save her son; a guilt-ridden Pea-Eye finally rides off to join his old boss; and Lorena follows her husband. Everybody who survives winds up in Joey's hometown for the showdown.
Bleak, stately, terrifying, and moving: It's not just the wonderful story and completely original, perfectly American characters; McMurtry writes as well about aging as has ever been done.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 1993
ISBN: 0-671-79281-4
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1993
As Jessie Burlingame lies handcuffed to her bed in Gerald's Game (p. 487), she recalls how, on the clay 30 years ago that her dad molested her, she had a vision of a woman—a murderer?—at a well King explains that vision here: Dolores Claiborne is the woman, and her story of how she killed her husband, and the consequences, proves a seductively suspenseful, if quieter, complement to Jessie's shriek-lest of a tale. The garotte-tight Gerald's Game is one of King's most stylish novels, and the Maine author flexes more stylistic muscle here, having feisty Dolores tell her tale in a nonstop monologue, rich in Down East dialect, that steadily gathers force. Dolores, 65, is speaking to Andy Bissette, sheriff of the island offshore Maine where she's lived her life, most of it as housekeeper for Vera Donovan, a wealthy "bitch." We soon learn that Dolores has a confession to make—in her own sweet time ("I feel a draft in here, Andy. Might go away if you shutcha goddamn trap"). Amidst details—often crudely funny—of her power-plays with Vera, and of her early life, we learn how, years back, Dolores's rotten husband began molesting their teenaged daughter, then stole her college funds. Dolores's retribution—the killing—forms the story's centerpiece, and, taking place on the same day that Jessie's dad molested her, forges the psychic bond—neither elaborated on nor explained—between the two women. It's Dolores's final years with Vera, though, and the bitter manner of Vera's death, that have brought Dolores to the sheriff—and that ultimately transform this, like Gerald's Game, into a devastating tale of heroism in the face of life's suffering. Without the flash and twisted fun of Gerald's Game, this may not sell as well (despite a 1.5 million first printing); but Dolores is a brilliantly realized character, and her struggles will hook readers inexorably.
Pub Date: Dec. 7, 1992
ISBN: 0451177096
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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