While volunteering for the Pacific Northwest section of the Miyako Project, an organization created to help clean up debris...
In Cooper’s (Riders of the Tides, 2013) second thriller featuring tribal forester Earl Armstrong, a wealthy man resorts to murder and kidnapping to find an ancient mask on an island off the Washington coast.
While volunteering for the Pacific Northwest section of the Miyako Project, an organization created to help clean up debris from the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Earl finds a corpse in the surf. An autopsy suggests possible homicide, and Earl realizes that the dead man, Will, may have been killed on Destruction Island, a marine reserve. Will’s brother, Leon, has the same suspicion, and after strange men spot Leon on the island, someone tries to blow up his boat. It turns out that billionaire antiquities collector Juno Betar is searching for a ceremonial mask hidden in a cave on the island. Earl has “vivid dreams” involving his great-grandfather, Christian Zauner, the island’s first lighthouse keeper, and in one of them, he witnesses the discovery of the mask in the late 19th century. Once Juno learns that Earl may know the mask’s location, the forester and his family become targets. Meanwhile, a Japanese woman named Norika Edo is looking for a ship’s escape pod, lost during the tsunami. The pod contains her husband’s body, but it turns out that yakuza gangsters are after something else in the vessel—a small fortune in diamonds and bearer bonds. Cooper’s novel boasts suspense with a touch of mysticism, along with exciting scenes of chases, murders and kidnappings. Norika and her team’s hunt puts them in the same vicinity as the other characters, but their plots don’t converge until near the very end. Overall, the story of Earl and Juno is more riveting, as Norika’s tale isn’t as fully developed. Still, both stories have memorable moments, as when yakuza boss Yuri Matasuba reminds Norika of her husband’s debt, leaving her with fewer fingers; and when other characters undertake an aquatic attack in underwater caves. Along the way, Cooper also adds nice, spoiler-free references to Earl’s first adventure.Pub Date: July 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-0988198333
Page Count: 476
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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