An uneven but entertaining tale about the struggle to displace dirty energy sources.
In this environmental thriller, an American attempts to protect his family from shadowy forces in Peru.
American engineer and renewable energy specialist Frank Anderson is excited to work on a solar project high in the Andes, even if he has some suspicions regarding the motivations of the oil company that is funding it. If he is successful, it may serve as a blueprint for future solar installations in the region. Not long into the work, Frank is pulled from his car and violently beaten by a gang of masked men bearing machetes and hammers. His wife, Joanna Tavares, leaves their children home in California to stand by Frank’s hospital bedside. But shortly after her arrival, she receives a sloppy, threatening note mentioning their daughters, one almost identical to the message her husband received before his attack: “MRS ANDERSON WELCOME TO HOTEL RESIDENCIAL YOU HAVE BEUATIFUL GIRLS.” Joanna is soon kidnapped outside of the hotel by another gang of men, leaving Frank in a precarious state. Who is targeting his family and why? As he works to rescue his wife—and she plots to escape—Frank must determine the parties involved not only in his beating and her kidnapping, but also the solar project that employs him. It’s a conspiracy that will lead him to powerful corporate entities in both Peru and the United States—for whom the lure of profit is easily worth the cost of human life. Smolders’ (Cloning Galinda, 2017, etc.) prose is controlled and fluid: “When Google arrived, it spoke” a cruel “language: horrifying accidents in the Andes mountains; hypoxia, altitude sickness of the worst kind; indecipherable languages; drugs; cocaine candy; terrorists; Sendero Luminoso, the Shining Path resurging; kidnapping; poisoning.” The novel moves rather slowly at the beginning, and its villains are pretty easy to identify. Even so, the time that Smolders takes to build his world is well spent, increasing the verisimilitude of what could have been a silly plot in lesser hands. The dramatic setting and some compelling characters—particularly Joanna and her environmentalist sister, Anita—help to make this a believable and enjoyable read.
An uneven but entertaining tale about the struggle to displace dirty energy sources.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5320-6666-5
Page Count: 254
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2019
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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