Dark, creative visions worthy of the music that inspired them.
Twenty gritty stories riff on Bruce Springsteen’s song about a small-town hustler.
“Meeting Across the River,” from the Born to Run album (celebrating its 30th anniversary this year), begins: “Hey, Eddie, can you lend me a few bucks / And tonight can you get us a ride . . . . ” The song’s narrator is planning a last-chance hustle across the river so he can make some quick bucks and get back in good with his girl, Cherry, who’s sore that he took her radio and hocked it. The stories here, most written by seasoned mystery and thriller authors who are also devotees of the Boss, offer tangled reconfigurations of similar criminal intrigues. Taking their cue from the song’s film-noir tone, they feature lots of action in bars and stakeouts in cars. Naturally, many occur in New Jersey and New York City, but some transport us to such non-Springsteen locales as St. Paul, Minn. (William Kent Krueger’s “The Far Side of the River”), Montana (C.J. Box’s “Pirates of Yellowstone”), San Francisco (David Corbett’s “Bobby the Prop Buys In”), and Tecate, Mexico (Philip Reed’s “Claustrophobia”). In “Killing Time by the River Styx,” Peter David’s characters are already dead-by-shootout and waiting to be ferried across to Hades by Charon. Time has not been good to these characters; in many of the stories the narrator and Eddie meet again years after the betrayal of their friendship. (“And if we blow this one,” goes the song, “They ain’t gonna be looking for just me this time.”) Eddie is finishing a 25-year prison term in Randy Michael Signor’s “Crossing Over” when he spots the friend he took the rap for pumping weights in the yard. Two authors let the angry girlfriend tell her side of the story. In Pam Houston’s “Cherry Looks Back,” she bemoans her rotten taste in men. “The Other Side” by Aimee Liu remakes her into a published author named Cherie who recognizes her old flame at a book signing.
Dark, creative visions worthy of the music that inspired them.Pub Date: July 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-58234-283-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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