An engaging international thriller.
A young woman finds her life in danger when she puts a Colombian village’s economic future above her own in Smolders’ (The Bridge of Whispers, 2012, etc.) latest novel.
Gloria Romero is a young humanitarian working for the Futuro Fund in Colombia, which is backed by mining company The Silverman Group. In Cupíca, a small coastal village surrounded by jungle, everyone welcomes Gloria’s new ideas for manufacturing and fishing—except Marcos Rojas, who also works for the Fund. Marcos takes a fee from the local Paisas to ensure their control of fish distribution in the area, and he stymies Gloria in order to protect his financial arrangement—even when he finds out he’s the father of her unborn child. Gloria’s only true supporter is her boss, Liliana, a Silverman Group lawyer in Bogotá. The same night that Gloria presents a grand plan for an improved economic future, she disappears—only to reappear in Haiti, where she’s kidnapped and held for ransom. Facing a tough decision, Marcos and the Silverman Group launch a rescue plan. Smolders creates just the right amount of suspense throughout, with the omniscient narrator providing key insight into the characters’ thoughts and motivations (“She sighed as her thoughts turned to other Marcos-related matters. He wasn’t ready for a commitment. I should’ve known. For me, he’s gone. She knew herself, and she knew she couldn’t live with a man she’d have to share with a crowd.”). However, nothing is ever made too obvious to readers, and the author weaves the characters’ intriguing power plays with the flavor and danger of both Colombia and Haiti. Overall, Smolders delivers a convincing, understated thriller that brings Gloria’s humanitarian efforts, and the obstacles she faces, to vivid life.
An engaging international thriller.Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2012
ISBN: 978-1475933437
Page Count: 274
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2013
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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