Parmelee draws the depth and range of pedophilia and sexual slavery into an appalling light.
Parmelee’s understated thriller tackles a pedophilic, child-trafficking syndicate in Thailand.
Parmelee, who teaches English in Thailand, sticks close to home by setting his story in a school—a Roman Catholic scholarship school—in Bangkok, where Ignatius “Ig” Fylchworthy is a member of the staff. Through a series of sinister and grisly happenings, Ig discovers that his school is a hotbed of student sexual molestation. For the most part, Parmelee keeps the story running in the shadows, like a 1940s noir movie, and the inscrutable foreign climes make it all the more so. His writing can be strangely elliptical at times (“ ‘Yes, Sister had lunch in,’ she said, but spoke much more than this, somehow, though in an odd and very inexplicable way”) and wordy at others, but on the whole Parmelee keeps the drama perking along. Ig is a full character, if at the expense of other players who must express their personality through dialogue (“Hey, buddy, that was awesome! I’m so proud of you I could bawl, dude!”); he is a talented teacher who cannily uses his classroom to elicit information about the predation, far from a hero (“I was worried there might be something diabolical in their planning for me”) and with his own issues handling sexual appetite. But in his rage against the syndicate, he is a gratifying force for good. Parmelee is clearly at ease with his Thai locale and able to generate a realistic Catholic school atmosphere, even providing a host of colorful nuggets such as the school’s statues weeping tears of blood. An extended sting operation set up by Ig allows Parmelee to explore how syndicates like this go about their vile work, and his final speech evolves into a plea—and a commonsensical one, considering the circumstances—to relax the unnatural sexual restrictions placed on men and women of the church.
Parmelee draws the depth and range of pedophilia and sexual slavery into an appalling light.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2006
ISBN: 978-0557501328
Page Count: 304
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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