Curtis follows his lethargic oater Pepper Tree Rider (1994) with a high-caliber tale of Montana revenge. Starting off a week in jail after his quixotic attempt to squire lady-of-the-evening Ruby Campbell to the right side of the tracks in order to buy medicine for an ailing friend, Sawtooth Ranch hand Clint Durby isn't around for Lee, his aspiring journalist kid brother, to consult when he stumbles onto evidence of a syndicate snapping up all the available Crow Reservation land by hook or crook. Next thing Clint knows, Sheriff Earl Cox is telling him that Lee's been mistaken for an elk and accidentally shot dead. Clint's impromptu nighttime exhumation of Lee's body shows three bullet holes placed by hunters who couldn't have mistaken Lee for any elk at that range, and a further search turns up a telltale notebook that unsurprisingly identifies the members of the Sawtooth Cattle Syndicate as railroad magnate Big Jim Ralston, Sen. Lorenzo Cooley, and Percival, Duke of Dorset—all of them perverted sportsmen who'd hunted Lee down by having their hired guns drive him into an ambush. But what can Clint do with the evidence that Lee had gathered? The sheriff indicates his eagerness to vault onto the Syndicate payroll by arresting Clint; his snakelike deputy starts by promising to help Clint, then demands Lee's notebook as his ticket to an endless Syndicate paycheck; and Clint wonders if even Judge Chamberlain, due in Sawtooth at the end of the week, will be worth waiting for. What can one lone avenger do with powers like these arranged against him? Cut them down with a .44, that's what, in a bloody, simple- minded finale that'll remind frustrated crusaders everywhere why vigilante fantasies like this will always have a place in the popular imagination.
Pub Date: Dec. 14, 1995
ISBN: 0-8027-4151-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1995
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
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