A deft, elegantly written tour de force.
Debut thriller about the looting of a Federal Reserve Bank by thieves both morally irredeemable and close to irresistible.
Start with Paul Eamon Devine, a well-respected 40-something Federal District Court judge in Chicago. Paulie is a judge with a grudge. He bitterly hates Redding Prindiville, the newly named president of the Chicago Fed, blaming Prindiville’s venomous double-dealing, in part at least, for the untimely death of Paulie's beloved wife. Revenge fantasies crowd and cloud his mind, until one day he conceives what he considers the perfect get-even scheme. He'll rob Prindiville's bank, not so much for the money (though $100-million is an intriguing extra) as for the humiliation that will accrue to an arrogant, pretentious, ice-hearted spawn of Iago. The idea takes root, flourishes, refuses to be dislodged, and Paulie realizes that almost despite himself he's allowed it to become richly detailed. But he knows he can't do the heist by himself; he needs three accomplices. Paulie begins the recruiting process with his oldest and best friend, unflappable, absolutely devoted hero-firefighter Dave Brody. Chastity Scott comes next: she's a guard at the Fed, and Paulie senses in this resourceful former army officer the kind of resolution against which panic will beat its wings fruitlessly. He's right about Chastity but fatally wrong about her husband Trimble, his third recruit and the team's weakest link. It's panicky Trimble who breaks ranks and allows smart, ambitious Tony Plymouth to get a whiff of the conspiracy. And because Plymouth is the most relentless police officer since Inspector Javert, the team is forced to dodge and weave defensively, contemplating counter-measures that once would—and certainly should— have appalled them. Zagel, himself once a Federal District Court judge, obviously knows his settings, and he’s also managed to create an engaging cast of scoundrels who deserve disapproval but probably won't get it.
A deft, elegantly written tour de force.Pub Date: June 10, 2002
ISBN: 0-399-14891-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2002
A clever and current book about a complicated woman and her romantic relationships.
The story of the entangled affairs of a group of exceedingly smart and self-possessed creative types.
Frances, an aloof and intelligent 21-year-old living in Dublin, is an aspiring poet and communist. She performs her spoken-word pieces with her best friend and ex-lover, Bobbi, who is equally intellectual but gregarious where Frances is shy and composed where Frances is awkward. When Melissa, a notable writer and photographer, approaches the pair to offer to do a profile of them, they accept excitedly. While Bobbi is taken with Melissa, Frances becomes infatuated by her life—her success, her beautiful home, her actor husband, Nick. Nick is handsome and mysterious and, it turns out, returns Frances’ attraction. Although he can sometimes be withholding of his affection (he struggles with depression), they begin a passionate affair. Frances and Nick’s relationship makes difficult the already tense (for its intensity) relationship between Frances and Bobbi. In the midst of this complicated dynamic, Frances is also managing endometriosis and neglectful parents—an abusive, alcoholic father and complicit mother. As a narrator, Frances describes all these complex fragments in an ethereal and thoughtful but self-loathing way. Rooney captures the mood and voice of contemporary women and their interpersonal connections and concerns without being remotely predictable. In her debut novel, she deftly illustrates psychology’s first lesson: that everyone is doomed to repeat their patterns.
A clever and current book about a complicated woman and her romantic relationships.Pub Date: July 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-451-49905-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The perfect feminist blockbuster for our times.
A decade in the life of a smart, earnest young woman trying to make her way in the world.
On Greer Kadetsky’s first weekend at Ryland College—a mediocre school she’s attending because her parents were too feckless to fill out Yale’s financial aid form—she gets groped at a frat party. This isn’t the life she was meant to lead: “You [need] to find a way to make your world dynamic,” she thinks. Then Greer meets Faith Frank, a second-wave feminist icon who’s come to speak at Ryland. During the question-and-answer period, Greer stands up to recount her assault and the college’s lackluster response, and, later, Faith gives her a business card. Like a magical amulet in a fairy tale, that card leads Greer to a whole new life: After graduation, she gets a job working for Faith’s foundation, Loci, which sponsors conferences about women’s issues. That might not be the most cutting-edge approach to feminism, Greer knows, but it will help her enter the conversation. Wolitzer (Belzhar, 2014, etc.) likes to entice readers with strings of appealing adjectives and juicy details: Faith is both “rich, sophisticated, knowledgeable” and “intense and serious and witty,” and she always wears a pair of sexy suede boots. It’s easy to fall in love with her, and with Greer, and with Greer’s boyfriend, Cory, and her best friend, Zee: They’re all deep, interesting characters who want to find ways to support themselves while doing good in the world and having meaningful, pleasurable lives. They have conversations about issues like “abortion rights, and the composition of the Senate, and about human trafficking”; they wrestle with the future of feminism, with racism and classism. None of them is perfect. “Likability has become an issue for women lately,” Greer tells an English professor while she’s still at Ryland, and Wolitzer has taken up the challenge. Her characters don’t always do the right thing, and though she has compassion for all of them, she’s ruthless about revealing their compromises and treacheries. This symphonic book feels both completely up-to-the-minute and also like a nod to 1970s feminist classics such as The Women’s Room, with a can't-put-it-down plot that illuminates both its characters and larger social issues.
The perfect feminist blockbuster for our times.Pub Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-59448-840-5
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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