It only begins when the fat lady sings, as San Antonio D.A. Mark Blackwell (Fade the Heat, 1990) learns in this crackling tale of a child-abuse confession too good to be true. Forgetting the maxim never to trust a freebie, Blackwell allows his old boss Eliot Quinn to talk him into accepting Chris Davis's surrender on charges of having kidnapped and molested two young boys. Standing before the judge, though, Davis recants his confession, and when Blackwell tries to cobble together a case from the boys' testimony, one of them positively identifies the perp as Austin Paley, Blackwell's old friend and Davis's lawyer. At the same time, a third boy, seeing Paley on TV news, spontaneously announces that this was the man who abused him in an incident he's kept secret for two years. More witnesses don't make a stronger case against an opponent like Paley, however, as Blackwell realizes when he ties Paley to an old coverup of urban development gone murderous—and sees just how capable Paley is of calling in favors to the powers that be in his desperate attempt to stay out of jail: one of the witnesses suddenly refuses to testify—an obvious beneficiary of a big payoff—and another begins to get cold feet. As if the political chicanery doesn't make the terrain slippery enough, Blackwell also has to cope with ethical reservations when Quinn gives him the details of Paley's own abused childhood (a secret Quinn has been covering up on his own) and sees how closely Paley's childhood—and the neglect of his star witness, Tommy Algren- -mirror his own distant relationship to his son David. Brandon proves unexpectedly canny about the devastating appeal of molesters to their young victims, and shows again that nobody, not even Scott Turow, can outdo him in blow-by-blow courtroom suspense- -even though once the verdict is in, you may wonder what all the fuss was about. (Literary Guild Selection for Winter)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-671-76032-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1993
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
BOOK REVIEW
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