Stein (Hoopla, 1983) has himself a potential Big Book in his second novel, an engrossing and revealing medical thriller centering on breast cancer cure and the ruthless maneuvering to claim credit for the achievement. When Dr. Daniel Logan accepts a research fellowship at the prestigious American Cancer Institute in Washington, D.C., he quickly learns that the best, perhaps only, way to get along is to go along: to settle into the orbit of one of the Institute's powerful research warlords. ACI is, at its heart, soulless. Logan would rather not play the game, but the process is inevitable in order to survive professionally. Which powerful member of the corporate bureaucracy should he choose? The imperious, autocratic chief of medicine, Raymond Larsen? The nonconformist, sometimes mercurial head of oncology, Seth Stein, who lets it be known that he treasures loyalty above all? Or perhaps renowned breast cancer specialist Gregory Stillman, Stein's most hated rival? Since Logan is the best of the ACI's new young associates, he manages to settle in comfortably. He also forms a liaison with his beautiful Italian associate, Sabrina Como. When they, together with another fellow, John Reston, develop a treatment protocol for breast cancer based upon the AIDS drug Compound Q, they find themselves thrust into a maze of medical espionage and conspiracy. Reputations and personal advancement take precedence over patient needs, and betrayal becomes the order of the day. Compound Q is apparently discredited, but Logan's and Como's salvation may lie in research done more than half a century earlier in pre-Nazi Germany. Events come to a somewhat melodramatic climax when a Very Important Woman lies near death from metastasized breast cancer. Truly a page-turner, with fascinating insights into the ethics of big medicine.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-385-31286-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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