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
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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