The world's a perilous place indeed, full of moral ambiguity and inscrutable Asian mystique, in Lustbader's (Black Blade, 1993, etc.) second installation of the Kaisho series. While piecing together clues of an international criminal bombing plot, Nicholas Linnear must locate Mikio Okami, the Japanese Mafia godfather he finds morally reprehensible but has sworn to his father to protect. Okami is in hiding because most of the other characters want him dead. His closest Japanese associates want to move past petty business profits and arms sales into drug trafficking. American mobster ``Bad Clams'' Leonforte has an unhealthy interest in tracking Okami, possibly because he is the adversary of Okami's former partner, the brutally murdered Dominic Goldoni, or because he is involved with Senator Dedalus, who coordinates illegal arms trades from a Washington, DC, strip joint. Linnear pursues the Asian connection and, while there, an old flame, while his pal Lew Croaker sleuths in the States, a job that includes tailing Goldoni's sister, Margarite, with whom, if that don't beat all, he's in love. Occasional telephone conversations between Linnear and Croaker recap their progress in tracing Okami and digging up the details on Torch, a powerful, portable nuclear weapon scheduled to detonate in some unspecified city. Until then, it is housed with its creator, a Russian cyberneticist and defector, in Floating City, the Vietnamese stronghold of Rock, an American veteran who had too much fun firing his missile launcher to ever leave Vietnam. While mingling with these politicians and gangsters, the heroes rely upon their unique resources: Linnear upon his tanjian—a psychic discipline that converts thought into action—and Croaker upon his biomechanical, titanium-sheathed left hand. Honorable bad guys and elaborate secrets mingle with the usual senseless violence and sensual, exploited Asian women. Whoever makes it to the end of this entangled thriller will find that the loose ends make the next Linnear installment a must-read.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-671-86808-X
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1994
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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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