Forget Grisham. Grippando works in the James Patterson mold: high concepts, simple characters, prefab thrills, turbo-charged...
A wild will turns its legatees into clay pigeons in Miami lawyer Jack Swyteck’s latest outing.
Sally Fenning’s luckless first marriage ended in poverty, divorce, and homicide: A masked man broke into her house, attacked her, and drowned her four-year-old daughter Katherine. Five years later, her second marriage seems to have gone a lot better; a cagey prenup and prudent investments have left her $46 million richer. So why does she contact a hit man and ask him to kill her? If she’s so devastated by Katherine’s murder, why has she waited five years? And why does the will she leaves behind after she’s shot to death on the freeway divide her entire estate among six people she didn’t even like, with the stipulation that the whole pot will go to the last survivor? As the would-be heirs—Sally’s ex Miguel Rios, his divorce lawyer Geraldo Colletti, Miami Tribune reporter Deirdre Meadows, assistant state attorney Mason Rudsky, small-time hoodlum Tatum Knight, and mysterious Alan Sirap—begin eyeing each other nervously, Swyteck (Beyond Suspicion, 2002, etc.), who wants nothing to do with the case, gets dragged into it by his best friend, Tatum’s brother Theo, who insists that his brother didn’t kill Sally, even though he’s the hit man she pitched her own death to. Jack spins his wheels interminably filing suit against Rudsky to force him to disclose files on Katherine’s unsolved murder and flying to the Ivory Coast to see Sally’s sister Rene, a pediatrician working with Children First, so it’s a good long time before the heirs predictably start to die and the fun (though not the logic, complexity, or surprise) begins.
Forget Grisham. Grippando works in the James Patterson mold: high concepts, simple characters, prefab thrills, turbo-charged pacing, and utterly forgettable twists and turns.Pub Date: July 8, 2003
ISBN: 0-06-000555-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2003
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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