A superbly balanced, exactingly paced military thriller featuring a heroic attorney.
A lawyer and Army Reserve aviator seeks to stop the production of a faulty Marine vehicle in this novel.
In Raleigh, North Carolina, Jake Baird is a man with a fledgling law practice. One day he meets with Lisa Thorpe, whose husband, Sam, died while test flying an experimental Marine vehicle called the XV-11. The incident happened at Maryland’s Patuxent River Naval Air Station, and Lisa believes that the military is keeping information from her. While Jake doesn’t immediately file her lawsuit, he promises to investigate the circumstances of Sam’s death (he can’t be too reckless going against the military with his new contingency-free practice, which pays most of a case’s expenses). The next day, Jake finds a note in his convertible telling him to show up at a nearby restaurant. There, he encounters a stranger who leaves him with a folder full of classified information relating to the XV-11—aka the Sea Eagle—and its development. Jake must be cautious in trusting this contact, since the possession of classified documents is illegal. Meanwhile, elements of the local Marine Corps prepare to leave for a mission in Afghanistan using the Sea Eagle, which has yet to prove itself safe or reliable in simulated combat situations. In this tale, Crouse (Aviation Law, 2006) delivers an extremely fluid blend of legal thrills and military action. He conveys the problems of the XV-11 with both specialized terms and clear visuals that make the reader feel war craft savvy; the Sea Eagle, for example, has “twenty common hydraulic lines—so a bullet in one could cause simultaneous failure of several different hydraulic systems.” Crouse also reveals tricks of the lawyer’s trade, as when Jake attaches the classified documents to a Request to Admit, a written maneuver that would compel the opposing party to acknowledge the information within. No military thriller would be complete, however, without an exiled scientist (Dr. Stanislas Kolinsky), a smart, beautiful foil (fellow lawyer Madison Wright), and a cabal of murderous operatives—all of which Crouse uses to polish up his patriotic narrative.
A superbly balanced, exactingly paced military thriller featuring a heroic attorney.Pub Date: June 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9974712-0-5
Page Count: 262
Publisher: Caromount Island Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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