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
BOOK REVIEW
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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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