Despite an overabundance of storylines, this engrossing tale delivers deep industry knowledge and rounded characters.
A project manager turns a surprise layoff into an opportunity for payback in this debut novel.
Adameit’s narrative centers on Dan Gamble, a project manager with Stygian, an electronics product manufacturing firm. Gamble, who has been in the industry for three decades, is respected and well liked by his peers and business partners, but isn’t thrilled with his employer’s practices and demeanor. Still, he’s been with Stygian for almost five years, at which point the employee stock ownership program fully vests, so Gamble hangs in there. Then he’s unceremoniously let go three months short of vesting. Despite the shock, Gamble agrees to help tie up some loose ends, and in the process, discovers something he shouldn’t. Angry over his treatment, he has an idea on how to extract justice from Stygian, and discovers he has more friends and allies than he thought willing to help him get it. Adameit, who also has three decades of EPM experience, writes about the ins and outs of the industry with knowledge and flair, making what might be otherwise dry information come to life. Unfortunately, this verve doesn’t always extend to the dialogue, which sometimes veers between excessively explanatory and downright florid. Despite the inconsistent dialogue, the author does fine work in sketching in the characters. Each one is distinct on the page, with consistent traits and reactions. And despite the antagonists’ almost cartoonishly callous greed, nearly all of the players evince at least one somewhat redeeming value or trait. One of the major subplots, involving Gamble and his cohorts committing an extremely shady act in order to gain leverage on the primary antagonist, demonstrates the characters also display a few negative qualities. This subplot is just one of many—so many that the number of threads and machinations bogs down the book and dilutes its impact.
Despite an overabundance of storylines, this engrossing tale delivers deep industry knowledge and rounded characters.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73385-032-2
Page Count: 522
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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