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PANAMA

Henry Adams, ``grandson of one President and great-grandson of another,'' becomes a courageous sleuth in the hotels, streets, and tunnels of 19th-century Paris. It's 1892, and Adams, 54, is in France to research his book, Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres. It's also seven years since the suicide of his wife Clover, so that when Adams meets an American artist working at her easel in the fields near Mont-Saint-Michel, and when she reminds him of Clover, it's understandable he'll do some cathedral-seeing with her and, with her consent, call on her when both are back in Paris. At her Paris address, though, Adams is told that no Miriam Talbott is there or ever was; worse, he is summoned to the Paris morgue to identify her dead bodyexcept that the body isn't Miriam Talbott's. So begin four days of danger and intrigue that become steadily more intertwined with a vast bribery scandalinvolving the dismally failed French effort to build a Panama canalthat's about to topple the government. Missing one social engagement after another, Adams snoops and dashes about Paris on the trail of Miriam Talbott, indefatigably finding evidence of an enormous conspiracy, witnessing murders, fearing for Miriam's life, twice almost losing his own, and learning about the new concept of fingerprinting andeven moreabout the uses of photography in hunting crime. At end, mysteries will be solved, the government will have fallen, and Adams, patching up his tattered social affairs (including a could-have-been liaison with the wife of Senator Donald Cameron), will get back to his new book. He says to friend John Hay, ``If you want to understand what is happening around us today, you have to go back to the twelfth century and ask that question.'' A debut that offers intense intrigue; an intellectual hero who's pedigreed and real; and a Paris of its day vividly and expertly rendered. (First printing of 100,00; Book-of-the-Month selection)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-374-22943-0

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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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MAGIC HOUR

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

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