A New Orleans homicide cop confronts arms-smugglers, the Mafia and his own private demons in this bloody, ripsnorting suspenser, the latest offering from Burke (The Convict, The Lost Get-Back Boogie). On a fishing trip in Gataouatche Parish, Lieutenant Dave Robicheaux discovers the floating body of a young black woman. The trail leads to Julio Segura, a Nicaraguan vice king in exile, who is funding the Contras with dope money, and has put out a contract on Dave's lite. Segura is soon blown away by Dave's partner—one of a series of violent spasms that fail to mask the lack of a storyline. The other hoods involved in the arms-smuggling force alcohol down Dave's throat and leave him to die in a burning car. He survives the fire nicely, but doesn't do so well with the police higher-ups, who suspend him without pay, figuring he's boozing again: Dave is an arrested alcoholic, with a tidied marriage and combat service in Vietnam behind him. What prevents his return to an alcoholic hell is Annie Ballard, the sweet, stand-by-your-man Kansas blonde he's collected along the way. Dave still has vigilante work to do, dispatching one of the hoods and (in a development unrelated to the arms-smuggling) taking on the local Mafia chief. But not to worry: invisible hands tidy away the hood's body, the remaining arms-smugglers are brought to justice, and Dave is reinstated. Burke stumbles away from the ramifications of his arms-smuggling story to concentrate on the odyssey of one cop, producing a wildly uneven work in which all that counts, ultimately, is the excitement of the kill (eight characters meet violent ends). But while there is much garish overwriting here, there are also some fine scenes that fairly crackle with menace.
Pub Date: March 27, 1987
ISBN: 0099689707
Page Count: -
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1987
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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