by Jane Harvard ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 13, 1998
The tepid tale of a prostitution ring—courtesy of —Harvard,— the pseudonym adopted by four alums who’ve joined forces to serve up a novel set at their august alma mater. Toni Isaacs is a gung-ho reporter for the Crimson who gets a tip from an exotic dancer that Harvard students are moonlighting as prostitutes. Instantly and rather bizarrely obsessed with getting the story, Toni places an ad in a local paper touting an escort service staffed by students. She chats up the many callers who respond and hears rumors about an outfit called Class Ring, which proclaims its university ties by using Veritas-embossed condoms. Toni gets a call from a woman hinting that she wants work, but the caller is in fact from Dora Givens, one of the masterminds of Class Ring. She lures foolish Toni into a trap that culminates in Toni getting busted for solicitation, an episode that jeopardizes her standing at Harvard but strengthens her resolve to get the story. Under the guise of reporting on the company that Dora works for, she conspicuously drops her quarry’s name, after which she’s approached by a scruffy scientist who seems to want to leak something. But he disappears (is kidnaped?) before their scheduled meeting. A provocative picture pilfered from his mother’s garbage leads Toni to a bona-fide student hooker. When she subsequently discovers the dead body of one of her most handsome and charismatic classmates, his diary reveals that he too was a prostitute and that his secret lover was not only a popular professor but Dora’s partner in Class Ring. Intrepid Toni has unearthed the far-flung conspiracy. The calculated blend of Harvard ambiance and plentiful sex isn’t enough to make this effort fly, however workmanlike. Its characters are uniformly flat and unengaging, and its byzantine plot, while admirably coherent, is too busy and far- fetched to satisfy.
Pub Date: May 13, 1998
ISBN: 0-679-44858-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1998
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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