ABC-TV commentator Greenfield offers an antic first novel with a deadly serious point about the absurd perils posed by the electoral college. Two days after narrowly defeating his Democratic rival, the Republican president-elect of the US dies in the wake of a botched photo op. Almost everyone in the country, including Al DeRossa (a network TV analyst who more or less anchors the set-piece narrative), assumes the departed's running mate will be sworn in as chief executive come January. This prospect appalls professional pols and the public alike since the GOP's nominee for vice president is a blue-blooded boob by the name of Theodore Pinckney Block. As it happens, Teddy Blockhead (as he's widely known) is not a shoo-in because, while nominally pledged to vote for their parties' candidates, the nation's 535 electors are not actually bound to do so. One of the first to appreciate the implications of free agency is Dorothy Ledger, an elector from Michigan who confounds the Republican National Committee and the country when she raises points of order at an open meeting convened to fill the vacancy on the party's ticket with Block. Her stand at what was supposed to be a pro forma exercise unleashes a full-blown constitutional crisis and much behind-the-scenes deal-making. Contributing to the chaos are players like W. Dixon Mason (a charismatic black populist who trades on racial strife), lobbyist Jack Petitcon (``the Hebrew from the Bayou''), and a host of vaultingly ambitious campaign aides. At the close, Teddy Blockhead's good breeding helps produce a makeshift resolution of the succession problem, but not before Greenfield has had a field day with Washington's establishment, the media's feeding frenzies, idealogues whose ethics could most charitably be described as flexible, and other of federal government's less edifying pilot fish. A grand entertainment cum history lesson whose triumphant bad taste, genuine wit, and uncommon sense could and should make it a landslide winner in the marketplace. (Film rights to Savoy Pictures; author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 12, 1995
ISBN: 0-399-13812-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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