The gloves come off in the legal slugfest that follows an accusation of child molesting in a Hudson River day-care center. At first the preschoolers' stories of nudity and strawberry jam, Popsicle sticks and poop cakes seem incredible, but psychologists and investigators working for the police press for more indictments even after a grand jury charges Laurie Coles, of the Snug Arms day-care, with 23 counts of sexual abuse. Harry Hull, the court-appointed defense lawyer plucked from the slow track to oblivion, starts out strongly suspecting his client's guilt, but the case seems too pat— the seven children competing to top each other's accusations, the parents closing ranks against the Snug Arms (one crazy father tries to burn the place down with the owner inside), and the local jurors blandly assuring counsel that they don't know anything prejudicial about the case. Hull's real enemy, he decides, is Judge Jacko Mathes, who privately tells him that they're just going through the motions, rules against his attempts to cross-examine the children and to confront them with Laurie, and even succeeds in quashing charges against Mickey Strand, an estranged father who's caught in the courtroom stoked on cocaine with a gun in his pocket. Clearly the case is trumped up (this isn't one of those courtroom dramas that asks whodunit), but how can Hull possibly win a not-guilty verdict with the community set against him and the jury ready to convict? Only, he decides, by provoking Mathes to some action that will throw the whole case out of court. So instead of focusing on the evidence, he turns the case into a referendum on the judge's conduct, doing his best to turn the courtroom into a circus. Don't be fooled: despite the somber backdrop, a rivetingly entertaining first novel.
Pub Date: Feb. 15, 1993
ISBN: 0-88184-902-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1992
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
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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