Hall's latest blast of Florida heat resurrects stylish dropout Dick Thorn (Tropical Freeze, 1989), hell-bent on avenging the suspicious diving-accident death of his ladylove Darcy Richards, who'd been asking one question too many about red tilapia. Red what? Even ichthyologists would be surprised to learn that this tasty, but ugly, brown fish has now been genetically engineered in everybody's favorite designer color—a billion-dollar secret Darcy had gotten wise to when checking surveillance tapes for Thorn's old buddy Sugarman. A colorful attempt on his own life alerts Thorn to two enemies out of your most atavistic dreams: Roy Murtha, the liquor- store owner Darcy had first heard mention red tilapia, and Harden Winchester, a canny, demented Gulf Coast fish farmer who's spent millions developing the fast-breeding fish so that he can release them into the Gulf, thereby wiping out thousands of less competitive species and incidentally ending the only life his ex-wife Doris' dying husband, a commercial fisherman, can imagine. Best Villain honors, though, go to Harden's daughter Silvie, ``the girl with no sex,'' who feeds each man she meets a tale of incest in order to persuade him to go up against invincible Harden. When Thorn, eager for his own crack at Harden, falls in with Silvie, things really heat up. Thorn's brief, maniacally funny masquerade as Harden's chief fish-farm rival ends with Thorn heading back to Harden's place—where Doris, eager for a reunion with the daughter she abandoned years ago, and Murtha, hot on her trail, are also bound. Merry, brawny, and rambunctious: guaranteed to please fans of John D. MacDonald, Elmore Leonard, and anybody in between.
Pub Date: April 4, 1994
ISBN: 0-385-30798-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1994
It’s difficult to drum up sympathy for this missing child, swaddled as she is in such a dull and harmless plot.
A questionable decision leaves a couple in a situation no parent wants to face: it’s the middle of the night and their baby is gone.
Anne and Marco Conti seem like the perfect upstate New York family. He runs a successful software development company while she stays home with 6-month-old Cora; maybe soon she’ll go back to work at the art gallery she loved. Yet looks are deceiving: his company is floundering, and she’s struggling with postpartum depression. A nice night out at a neighbor’s birthday party might be just the thing everyone needs. But when the babysitter cancels, Anne and Marco decide to leave Cora alone, taking the baby monitor with them and checking on her every half hour. This ends predictably badly. When they return, drunk, after 1:00 a.m., Cora is gone. What ensues is a paint-by-numbers police investigation, led by the personality-free Detective Rasbach, who seems to cycle through potential theories as to Cora’s whereabouts the same way Lapena must have in her early plotting stages, except it all ended up on the page. When it’s clear, or at least partially clear, what happened to the child, any remaining tension hisses out like a pricked balloon. Anne’s wealthy mother and stepfather seem a too-obvious plot device, and they are, while her issues with the very real problem of postpartum depression are merely glossed over or trotted out during faux-fiery monologues.
It’s difficult to drum up sympathy for this missing child, swaddled as she is in such a dull and harmless plot.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2108-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
Fans will spot the last twist a mile away, but it doesn’t matter. For once Scottoline subordinates the criminal plot to the...
Legal and illegal shenanigans take a back seat to mother love and its vicissitudes in Scottoline’s barn-burning crossover novel about every adoptive mother’s worst nightmare.
Even though the escalating homicide count in Philadelphia includes more and more children and economic clouds portend layoffs at her newspaper, features reporter Ellen Gleeson has her own private store of sunshine: her three-year-old son Will, whom she fell in love with two years ago when a story about pediatric care brought her to his hospital bedside. Because Will had a heart defect and his mother couldn’t care for him, she was willing to sign him over to a single mother, a decision Ellen has blessed every day of her life—until the day she sees a circular asking, “HAVE YOU SEEN THIS CHILD?” with the photograph of a boy whose resemblance to Will is uncanny. Timothy Braverman, abducted from his wealthy Florida parents, Carol and Bill, in a carjacking that went horribly wrong, hasn’t been seen since. Despite her dread of confirming her fear that Will is Tim, Ellen can’t help neglecting her job (with predictably dire professional results) to gather more information about him, partly because of her reporter’s nose for a story, but mostly because she wants what’s best for her son, no matter the cost. The trail leads her to a garage full of adoption folders, some unwelcome revelations about Will’s birth mother and a tense game of hide-and-seek with the Bravermans as she realizes what a hornet’s nest her questions have stirred up, and how determined someone is to make sure this is one story she doesn’t break. Though the blood-and-thunder climax arrives a mite early, there’s one final twist in reserve.
Fans will spot the last twist a mile away, but it doesn’t matter. For once Scottoline subordinates the criminal plot to the human-interest story that rides sidesaddle in all her thrillers (Lady Killer, 2008, etc.), and the result is her best book yet.Pub Date: April 14, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-312-38072-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2009
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