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VENGEANCE

Global financial melodrama by the author of the similar The Money Stones (1980) and Cold New Dawn (1988). In 1978, Tom Lambert views a pornographic tape of his wife Kristen and plots vengeance against those who made the tape and drove her to suicide. Flashbacks to 1967 and then forward show us Tom's rise as the sold-out top honcho of Bolton Automation, a typewriter company gobbled up by a seemingly ageless, superhuman Dionysiac billionaire, Maurice Stanton. Angry Tom is summoned for a talk on Stanton's personal island, Kariakos, in the Greek Isles. Most of the rooms in Stanton's resplendent digs feature life-size statues of himself in various stages of sexual congress with his mistresses (he has three thrilling beauties at the moment). Tom is most upset by one entitled FELLATIO, which shows his beautiful guide Melody mouthing Stanton's member, their eyes locked in ecstasy—ashes to Tom, who himself had been feeling erotically hopeful about Melody. As it happens, Stanton's love-life is secondary to his financial life: among dozens upon dozens of companies he secretly owns are three of the world's largest corporations. Stanton wants to combine them at last into Stanton Industries, a gigantic conglomerate, with visionary, 28-year-old Tom as CEO. Tom sells off the new firm's welter of excess companies, focuses on computers. But he finds himself butting heads with the powerful top execs of all three major Stanton holdings, as well as with Stanton's homosexual filmmaker son Roddy. Meanwhile, he marries Stanton's long disaffected daughter Kristen. When Stanton dies, a shareholders' battle pits Tom against his heavyweight rivals and leads to Kristen's suicide, which Tom at first thinks is murder and so plots his vengeance against the nasties. Stanton towers memorably above all—while the movie-of-the- week story moves forward at a gripping if predictable pace.

Pub Date: July 17, 1991

ISBN: 0-06-027920-1

Page Count: 480

Publisher: HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1991

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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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MAGIC HOUR

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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