Leaving behind the comic-strip leaps and blows of his nimble Ninjas (Floating City, 1994, etc.), Lustbader constructs an entire actioner set in the Miami area. No more worldwide crime cartels masterminded by Asians? Well, let's not get carried away. Yes, there is just such a cartel, but it's masterminded by Heitor and Antonio Bonita, a pair of bloody identical twins born bad. They run a cartel that deals in arms, drugs, white slavery, you name it, and they run it behind a line of front men who take the heat should the law intrude. One of the twins' specialties is dealing in human body organs that they harvest illegally in the States and airship to Central and South America. Scalpel-wielding Heitor likes to remove the organs while the ``donor'' is still alive. On their trail, meanwhile, is the Department of Justice. Although longtime Lustbader cop and hero Lewis Croaker has retired to captain a Miami charter boat, he's still a stringer for the Agency and carries a badge. Burned out and unwilling to be drawn back into the action, Croaker is facing a family crisis: His drug-addicted 15-year-old niece Rachel, now on dialysis, will be dead in five days if she doesn't receive a replacement kidney. Croaker sets out to find a donor. As it happens, fabulously smooth criminal lawyer Marcellus Rojas Diego Majeur offers him both a vintage turquoise Mustang and a kidney for Rachel if Croaker will just assassinate the dazzlingly vicious Juan Garcia Barbacena (he cuts off women's breasts in his lighter moments), the Bonita twins' greatest rival in terror. Croaker suddenly finds himself in a bafflingly strange and dangerous world: Nobody is what he (or she) seems, and even the Justice team Croaker reluctantly hooks up with is seemingly run by a very bad guy indeed. . . . Lustbader's intense flow of invention is wonderful to watch: Wild, gory, assured over-the-top entertainment throughout.
Pub Date: July 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-671-00329-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1997
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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