A whimsical sequel to Carroll’s Top Dog (1996) pits reformed greenmailer (and diehard dog lover) Bogey Ingersoll against satanic plotters who want to elect a malevolent billionaire to the Presidency. Previously, Wall Street bad-boy Bogey found himself transformed into a dog and taken on a tour de farce through a leafy fantasy world where, after tipping the balance of power between bad angel Zalthazar and good angel Helither, he learned humility and the virtue of self-sacrifice. Now, safely installed in a southern California mansion that he shares with 50 garrulous mutts, Bogey is rich beyond his dreams and celebrated in made-for-TV movies as the millionaire who thought he was a dog. Meantime, he carries on Dr. Doolittle—like conversations with his four-legged friends and tries not to think too much about his divorce from his trophy bride Felicity. Still, his sleep is haunted by disturbing dreams in which he’s once again a dog and some unseen beasty from the fantasy world is out to get him. Then, after a silly charity gathering of California’s ridiculously rich, Bogey finds himself framed for the gory disembowelment of Battle Creek cereal heir Winston Byron. Suspecting that the dreaded Pig Faces—the aforementioned beasties—have set him up, Bogey hires jet-setting Bill Clancy, the best lawyer money can buy, to keep the cops at bay. He also falls for the beautiful Dr. Alex Epperly. Sadly, though, it’s money, not love, that’s needed to oppose bad angel Zalthazar, regnant once again and positioning the ultra-wealthy Barney Soderberg (Warren Buffet with bad hair) to run for President. With Pig Faces, harpies, and a feckless Incubus slithering about to dispatch Soderberg’s enemies, Bogey allies himself anew with Helither. An amusing, featherweight spoof of sex-and-money political novels, with good triumphing only because evil has its price.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-441-00597-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
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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