A promising, often entertaining debut soaked through with Texas flavors.
A closeted local politician, a beautiful college student with serious financial problems, a “fixer” with connections, and a mob goon race for treasure in this tense, Dallas-based novel by Lynch (Babylon 5, 2006, etc.).
College student Allison Kerry is working two summer jobs, struggling to save money for law school and help out her hapless brother and his critically ill son. Her ethics and tenacity are admirable—but when grocery bags containing packs of $100 bills fall off the roof of a blue Suburban and onto her beat-up Volkswagen’s hood, she decides to hold on to it rather than report it or find its rightful owner, despite a cryptic note in one of the bags. How did nearly $750,000 end up on the roof of that SUV? This question briskly sets the plot in motion. The SUV, it turns out, belongs to Bill Garrett, an unscrupulous political fixer who’s committed countless crimes. City councilman Billy Clayton misleads him into believing that they’re both being blackmailed by a giant construction company and that they must pay off another council member to ensure a stadium contract and avoid an intimidating mob enforcer named James Garrelli. But Clayton has a deeper secret: the married Texan likes to step out with men at a bar called Booty Scoot. When Garrelli puts a gun to Clayton’s head, makes him say “I’m a hick who likes dick,” and blackmails him with photos, he knows he needs Garrett’s help. Meanwhile, with the help of a stalwart neighbor, Allison attempts to evade and outwit everyone else. Overall, this story is well-paced with some suspenseful moments that sometimes verge on ludicrous; for example, at one point, an African-American council member calculates “reparations” he’s owed to the penny and demands a bribe of $746,841.03. The principal characters are credible throughout, but the story is marred by some cartoonish figures, such as a hit man who can’t hit straight, a backwoods animal caretaker who names animals after his exes so he’ll enjoy killing them, and a wife addicted to buying heirloom china on eBay.
A promising, often entertaining debut soaked through with Texas flavors.Pub Date: May 10, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61296-697-7
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 4, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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