A long, unwieldy novel that recapitulates a story told better by its original author, with a final third setting up a story...
A retelling of Alexandre Dumas’ 1844 classic The Count of Monte Cristo that continues the story of Edmond Dantès.
The pseudonymous Holy Ghost Writer (The Count of Monte Cristo as Retold by Sherlock Holmes, 2013, etc.) offers 245 pages of new adventures for Dantès, aka the Count of Monte Cristo, narrated by Arthur Conan Doyle’s equally classic detective Sherlock Holmes (with a guest appearance by Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn). The new material, enough for a stand-alone novel by itself, is preceded by a 571-page recap of Dumas’ original novel, also narrated by Holmes. Given that the original is widely available in print and digital form, it’s hard to imagine why one would want to read a version that eliminates Dumas’ color and description. Holmes’ voice often sounds more like a 21st-century man’s (“Mercedes had no idea that [Fernand] was caught up in the thing with Edmond”) than Doyle’s meticulous, cerebral hero’s. The new material has Holmes befriending the much older Dantès and becoming embroiled in his life in the antebellum American South. Dantès is urged to go there by a mysterious, disembodied voice, which also advises him to buy a plantation and then free his slaves in order to show his neighbors that treating workers humanely gets better results than cruelty. The continuation also endows Dantès with not one, but two wives—Haydee and Mercedes from the original tale—and a passing liaison with a Bedouin girl, Raymee, produces twins. There’s also Black Beauty, an erstwhile slave whose son is widely assumed to be Dantès’; in fact, Holmes is his father. However, the plot never quite gets going, as the novel turns out to be merely a setup for a yet-to-be-published volume in which Dantès will prove to be the guiding force behind the Civil War and President Abraham Lincoln’s freeing of the slaves. The author also reveals that Dantès is the inventor of dry ice, Epsom salts and the greenhouse; the co-founder of Yale University’s legendary Skull and Bones Club; and a descendant of King Solomon, Jesus and the Merovingian kings. It effectively turns Dantès from a flawed hero who realizes too late the price of revenge to a two-dimensional uber-mensch.
A long, unwieldy novel that recapitulates a story told better by its original author, with a final third setting up a story that remains to be told.Pub Date: July 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-1490406848
Page Count: 816
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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