England's prolific Masterton (Flights of Fear, 1996, etc.) begins a new horror series featuring Jim Rook, a California psychic who teaches a remedial class in a San Fernando Valley high school. A bout of pneumonia that nearly killed him as a child has granted Rook psychic insight, though he doesn't realize it. One morning he interrupts a bloody battle in the boys' room between Tee Jay Jones and Elvin P. Clay. Then Rook discovers Elvin's body in a boiler room, with 112 stab wounds. Tee Jay is arrested, but Rook sees a black-suited man flitting about the halls and at the scene of the murder—though no one else can see this figure. Jim's palm-reading neighbor, Mrs. Vaizey, tries to awaken him to his greater psychic abilities, which Jim denies. Meanwhile, he leads his class through On the Road. Then the shadow man, a.k.a. The Smoke, approaches Jim and tells him that he needs his help. Jim is sure that Tee Jay's Uncle Umber, a follower of voodoo, is Elvin's murderer, and that The Smoke is somehow connected to Umber. When Mrs. Vaizey goes out-of-body to help Jim by infiltrating Uncle Umber's apartment, Jim watches in horror as she is killed in a particularly gruesome manner. The Smoke also begins appearing in Jim's classroom; at first only Jim and Tee Jay can see him, although the other kids eventually also become aware of him. Uncle Umber wants Jim to act as his messenger to a leading drug dealer and to tell him that he wants 90 percent of the dealer's take on every shipment. The Smoke, it turns out, is Umber's uncanny henchman. In the end, only Jim and his students can stand up to The Smoke, by robbing Uncle Umber of the voodoo stick that focuses his power. A sympathetic, poetry-reading hero provides Masterton with many better-than-average pages.
Pub Date: April 15, 1997
ISBN: 0-7278-4991-3
Page Count: 246
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1997
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
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
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