An intelligent drama about the shameful, systematic abuse of the world’s most vulnerable.
In Buford’s thriller, an American diplomat stationed in Southeast Asia works undercover against child sex trafficking and pays a steep personal price.
Chris Kelly’s first assignment for the U.S. State Department is in Cambodia, manning a window that processes applicants for visas to the United States. It’s menial drudgery, but in his free time, he also volunteers for the International Rescue Mission, an organization that aggressively opposes the sex trafficking of minors. Chris works in tandem with the IRM and the local police, posing as a customer seeking child prostitutes in order to expose those who run the trafficking rings. A police raid on a hotel rescues dozens of underage victims, who are then shuttled to a shelter in Ang Keo. However, these girls were “owned” by Chea Phyrom, a thuggish gangster with a history of brutal violence who’s also the nephew of Gen. Thul Chorn, Cambodia’s prime minister. Chea is enraged when he learns his business was targeted and orders the girls recaptured at gunpoint. In retaliation, he orders the beating of one of the IRM volunteers and the kidnapping of Chris’ 6-year-old adopted daughter, Mai. Frustrated that neither the American nor Cambodian governments are acting swiftly enough, Chris takes matters into his own hands, but he not only risks losing his wife and career in the process, but also destroying delicate relations between two nations. Debut author Buford lived with his family in Cambodia in 2004, and his novel’s plot is inspired by actual crimes, which lends the story a general air of authenticity. The author unpacks difficult problems by showing them from a variety of competing third-person perspectives—those of the children who suffer grimly, the older sex workers who resent any assault on their ability to make a living, and even the sexual predators who travel the globe. The story marches forward at a lively clip, and the emotional tension remains taut, like a tensile cord on the brink of snapping. This is a sad tale that’s often difficult to read, given the subject matter, but not hopelessly despairing and certainly edifying.
An intelligent drama about the shameful, systematic abuse of the world’s most vulnerable.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9993028-0-4
Page Count: 339
Publisher: Moontower Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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