A novel that asks what torture is, how far it can go and why society allows it as a means to an end.
Former Army intelligence officer John Powers, back in the States from Iraq, is arrested after a vigilante campaign to rid his neighborhood of drugs and undergoes a series of brutal interrogations in this nihilistic screed set in the near future.
Utilizing only skeletal conventions of the novel structure, Hopkins sets the scene with Powers’ long, anger-fueled, stream-of-consciousness rants and flashbacks, as the protagonist endures torture sessions at the hands of a corporate police force. Powers attempts to figure out why this is happening to him in a society whose benign legal system is well-established. He also can’t understand why he is being targeted when his methods, while admittedly illegal, are far more efficient at reducing drug trafficking than prior police procedures. While there is too much “tell” and not enough “show” in Hopkins’ book, his style draws chilling and effective comparisons to Orwell, Kafka, Nietzsche and Rand–an estimable group whose themes and narrative approach overlap in telling fashion here. Powers is an intriguing character–a product of a rough childhood whose school-of-hard-knocks survival skills and native smarts make him an ideal candidate for intelligence work once he lands in the service. But while he seems destined to become the sort of sociopathic soldier that sometimes blossoms under the brutal conditions of war, Powers instead develops a curious and humanitarian empathy in the well-told anecdotes of his time in Iraq. It’s after Powers is arrested that his military training and innate decency provide a fascinating conflict, as he is subjected to the disturbingly violent methods of Garrett Moore–the whatever-it-takes philosopher heading the corporate police. These sections pare the story to its essence and define a novel that is decidedly not for the squeamish.
A novel that asks what torture is, how far it can go and why society allows it as a means to an end.Pub Date: July 14, 2008
ISBN: 978-1419698309
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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