After 20 years of writing both WW II and contemporary thrillers, Higgins combines the two in a breakneck yarn about the wreck of a Nazi submarine—and its bombshell secret. There's always much disbelief to suspend with a Higgins novel, and never more than here, where the author, per his usual recycling, revives two characters from Eye of the Storm (1992) in an incredible way. The story begins in 1945 as Hitler gives Martin Bormann a briefcase containing a document signed by the Duke of Windsor, agreeing to his ascent to the throne after a Nazi invasion of Britain. Cut to 1992 and the Caribbean island of St. John, where a diver chances upon a sunken Nazi sub and pulls from it the captain's log. The diver flies to London; there, a translation of the log indicates that the sub carried Bormann to America, where he escaped just before the sub sank—with his briefcase still aboard. Word of the find reaches British intelligence honcho Charles Ferguson, who, conferring with the PM, determines that the Windsor document must be retrieved—but the diver is accidentally killed before he reveals the sub's location. So who does Ferguson tap to find the sunken vessel? Not an SAS agent or even James Bond, but IRA assassin Sean Dillon, who tangled with Ferguson in Eye of the Storm when the Irishman tried to blow up British PM John Major. The absurdity of Dillon working for Ferguson aside, the action whips along as the two fly to St. John, where—aided by a young lovely (who's a typically chaste Higgins heroine: there's no sex here)- -they scramble to find the sub. Meanwhile, a venal British blueblood and his drug-smuggling Cuban ally, both with family ties to Nazism, are determined to reach the sub first.... Manly action with cliffhangers galore that's too derivative and contrived to be Higgins's best—but that's close enough to hit the charts with a wallop.
Pub Date: June 23, 1993
ISBN: 0-399-13835-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1993
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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