A complex, sobering read that lays bare the sordid, damaging compromises of the drug-manufacturing world.
A generational family novel set against the backdrop of the burgeoning pharmaceutical industry.
Murrow’s debut, set in the mid-20th century, centers on the rise of big pharma and the marketing of the medical profession. In an inspired narrative decision, Murrow splits his story between two disparate perspectives. At the novel’s outset, George Parker takes a job as a sales representative for Wolfe-Davies Pharmaceuticals in Chicago, and young Jake Walton, having put himself through medical school, falls out with his stern father, a small-town doctor, and moves his wife and little son Ben to St. Louis. There, he takes a job as a physician for Wolfe-Davies' Medical Affairs Department. Parker’s rise through the company is accompanied by plenty of cynicism; at one point, an insider tells him, “The FDA never sees our experiments or interviews….The FDA only sees the language in the reports we choose to give them when we want their approvals to sell our drugs.” Jake’s introduction to the pharmaceutical world, however, is much more disillusioning; he almost immediately tells his wife that he feels immoral for giving his rubber stamp of approval to Wolfe-Davies products, despite legal risks; “people convicted of falsifying clinical data get prison sentences,” a soulless company hack says. “They’re basically forgers, and forgery is a felony.” Murrow expertly interweaves these two strands of the story together and fleshes them out by also giving readers a dramatic plotline involving a grown-up Ben in the Vietnam War. Murrow writes about the machinations of Parker and his fellow ladder-climbers at Wolfe-Davies with bare-knuckled eloquence. There are no legacies in the business world, one character says as the novel works its way to its touching climax: “People use money to hack trails through whatever’s between themselves and greater riches, and then those trails disappear just like empires, companies, and guys like us do.”
A complex, sobering read that lays bare the sordid, damaging compromises of the drug-manufacturing world.Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5377-1024-2
Page Count: 360
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2017
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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