Until then, though, Duffy keeps Gotham’s pot merrily a-bubble.
After hiding behind the pseudonym Haughton Murphy for his seven Reuben Frost whodunits (A Very Venetian Murder, 1992, etc.), Duffy jettisons their weakest link—the whodunit—to produce this rollicking tale of the want-of-a-nail that threatens to bring down a New York mayor.
Eldon Hoagland would be nobody’s idea of a mayor if only his competition weren’t so venal and incompetent. Even so, the white-haired former Columbia polical science prof enjoys a long honeymoon until, on his way out of his Princeton roommate Milford Swansea’s apartment, His Honor, drunk as a skunk, accidentally steps on a dog relieving himself near the mayoral vehicle. The dog reacts by biting him; his bodyguards react by shooting the dog and dumping his body into the East River; and the mayor thinks it’s all over except for the itching. But this isn’t just any dead dog: it’s the dearly beloved pet of Sue Nation Brandberg, the formidable Native American philanthropist who’d love to nail the mysterious perps—if only that didn’t mean exposing the only witness, her houseboy Genc Serreqi, to the majesty of the INS. Inevitably, the local press gets hold of the story just as Mayor Hoagland’s about to be identified as the murderer; and, inevitably, the powers who end up arrayed against the mayor turn out to be more powerful, and more unexpected in their wonderfully unprincipled alliances, than just one self-made heiress and her illegal Albanian bedmate. Aided by a supporting cast of totally fictional miscreants all too familiar to anybody who’s ever lived in New York or read a story about it, Duffy has an amusingly catty time savaging the pols, the police, the press, the governor, and the animal-rights lobby. Only a catastrophe that tempers the wind to the unrepentant mayor falls below the general level of effervescence.
Until then, though, Duffy keeps Gotham’s pot merrily a-bubble.Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7432-1082-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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