by Gregory C. Randall ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 26, 2014
A quick, descriptive baseball-themed thriller that gets a few strikes for reducing its main character to supporting status.
In Randall’s (12th Man for Death, 2012 etc.) latest thriller, a private eye’s attempt to bring a Cuban baseball player’s family to the United States mushrooms into an adventure involving diamond smuggling and gunrunning.
Star Cuban right fielder Toribo “Toro” Rodriquez defected to the United States to play in the major leagues. His family was supposed to come with him, but a last-second snafu left them behind. Years later, Rodriquez, now an established American star, enlists the aid of tough private investigator Sharon O’Mara to get his family out of Cuba and bring them to America. Meanwhile, O’Mara’s close friend, Kevin Bryan, goes to London to help with security for a major diamond shipment. The two cases dovetail when several Cubans, including the man watching Rodriquez’s family and a baseball team manager, steal the diamonds, and turn out to be involved with a gun-smuggling operation. After a double cross, one of the Cubans, a coldblooded killer named Marta de la Vega, comes to America to get revenge on the man who tricked her—and she heads straight into O’Mara and Bryan’s path. The author obviously knows Cuba well, and his descriptions will immerse readers in that country’s culture: “The men in guayaberas were leathery and dark, most younger by half than the Detroit steel they drove.” The story contains some flashback sequences of O’Mara’s time in Iraq, and here again, Randall is on firm ground: “Aleppo boil was…a fleabite–induced bug that could disfigure you for life, and even kill you slowly if not treated.” The story moves swiftly, with no extraneous subplots slowing the narrative drive. However, it doesn’t have a lot of surprises, and it unfortunately focuses as much on Bryan as it does on O’Mara. He’s a weaker and much less intriguing character, and the byplay between him and a British secret service agent, with its comparisons of America and Britain, is clichéd and quickly grows tiresome. As this book is part of the Sharon O’Mara Chronicles, she should have been its star pitcher—not a pinch hitter.
A quick, descriptive baseball-themed thriller that gets a few strikes for reducing its main character to supporting status.Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-0965651066
Page Count: 298
Publisher: Windsor Hill Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 25, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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BOOK REVIEW
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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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