Strictly for die-hard fans who won’t mind that even the shootouts are rushed and muddled.
Gunslinger Johnny Fierro’s rebirth as John Sinclair, son of a New Mexico rancher, is complete. Or is it?
Far from killing Guthrie Sinclair, the man his mother, Gabriela, had fled when he was only a child, Johnny has relented and let the old man take him into his domestic establishment. But his father isn’t exactly the nurturing type. And even if he were, it’s going to take more than a few kind words to civilize Johnny, who insists on calling his half brother, Guy, “Harvard,” complains about his foster sister Peggy’s cooking, and declines to introduce himself to Guthrie’s widowed neighbor, genteel racist rancher Edith Walsh, even when he’s doing a good deed for her. And that’s just when he’s at home. Let’s not even talk about Johnny’s gunfights, which claim a total of eight forgettable adversaries, and his habit of presenting himself at Delice Martin’s Cimarron whorehouse to celebrate each time by picking out a brace of young ladies equal to the number of victims he’s just shot dead. Will Johnny ever settle down, grow up, and clean up his language? Of course he will, but not quite yet in this second installment (Dance with the Devil, 2014), which features rudimentary plotting, primitive thought processes on the parts of even the most avowedly complicated characters, and tin-ear dialogue that blithely flouts genre and period norms, from Johnny’s suave self-qualification to the widow Walsh (“if I may say so”) to the experienced madam’s admonition to Johnny (“you really are clueless”).
Strictly for die-hard fans who won’t mind that even the shootouts are rushed and muddled.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4328-3120-2
Page Count: 358
Publisher: Five Star/Gale Cengage
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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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