Two mountain men pursue each other through backwoods Kentucky in a bloody tale of violence and revenge. Strunk's third novel returns to rustic Stanton County. But, instead of the 1930s Depression-era setting of his earlier work (Jordon's Showdown, 1993, etc.), this one is set in the gaudy present and features a smarmy psychokiller hillbilly named Darnell Pittmore, his ditsy girlfriend Hayley, and his inbred weirdo relatives Wormy and Shank, who help him kidnap Shelby Stockton, granddaughter of wealthy patrician lawyer G.D. Stockton, and hold her for a million-dollar ransom. Of course, the only man who can stop Pittmore is Shelby's other grandfather, Cole Clayfield—a kindly, college-educated mountain man who makes furniture in his spare time, communes with his dogs, and is tough enough to drink the blood of a freshly killed raccoon, soft enough to quote The Rub†iy†t, weak enough to remain haunted by his wife's tragic hit- and-run death, and man enough to hunt Pittmore down to his trashy boondocks lair. Such a task is more easily imagined than accomplished: In the novel's best scene, Clayfield, wounded and left for dead by Pittmore, hacks off a mangled finger and uses it to snare a gullible raccoon, which he then skillfully butchers, roasts, and devours, thus surviving until help arrives. Mostly, though, the story meanders downhill; on the one hand, Clayfield blunders badly in unlikely ways; on the other, he miraculously persuades Pittmore to give him back his arsenal of guns and his trusty pickup truck so that he can fetch the ransom money from G.D. Stockton. You don't have to be mountain-born to realize that such concessions make it considerably easier for your sworn enemy to kill you. Strunk tries to balance his macho violence with lessons on family values and homespun wisdom, but plot weaknesses make Clayfield's sensitive homilies hard to buy.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-06-101057-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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