A wickedly suspenseful thriller about the intrigue wrought when sex and lies are videotaped.
A smart, thrilling medley of twisted relationships, unrequited love and closely guarded secrets.
In late ’90s Manhattan, Jared “Jed” Chase confesses to his lawyer the snaky, illicit route that landed him in trouble and possibly in jail. Jed led a mundane life working in advertising-sales for The New York Times until he reconnected with recently divorced Katherine Cahill. Her ex-husband, Steve, who happens to be Jed’s college friend, introduced the two 10 years earlier—since then, Jed has been obsessed with her. When she approaches Jed looking for help, he understandably jumps at the chance, despite the sordid details. Apparently, Steve never changed his will after the divorce, so Katherine would inherit millions of dollars in the event of his death. She hatches a plan to murder Steve and take what she believes is rightfully hers. Blinded by adoration and passion, Jed agrees to do whatever Katherine asks; he even buys the gun. Within Sussek’s strong, captivating narrative, Katherine paints an awful picture of Steve’s behavior, going so far as to detail his secret sex-tape business, which, she tells Jed, she was pressured into participating. The tape she filmed with a client elicits angry, vengeful feelings from Jed toward Steve. Katherine, ever the conniving seductress, successfully manipulates Jed, but when the plan falls apart, Jed faces a life or death situation. He realizes that the woman he fantasized about for more than a decade could not be the woman intent on having her ex-husband murdered. In exquisitely detailed New York City, Jed employs his journalist friends to help piece together a different, even more lurid story than the one Katherine led him to believe.
A wickedly suspenseful thriller about the intrigue wrought when sex and lies are videotaped.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2012
ISBN: 9780615580074
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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