Patton keeps the pot boiling briskly in the deceptively laid-back manner of Elmore Leonard, but his real gift is to get...
Max Travis, the white-knight ADA of Portland, Oregon, is in big trouble this time, and it’s all his fault.
Max (The Shake, 2000) doesn’t think he’s in trouble, of course. Max thinks he’s in love. The twice-divorced workaholic, who’s just been dumped by his old professional rival, defense attorney Paige Prescott, has caught the eye of hairstylist Dana Waverleigh just as his friend Bill Roop was splitting up with her, and he’s fallen hard. After one night together he can hear bells ringing; after three dates they’re talking about marriage and children; after two weeks Max feels as if he’s known her forever. But he hasn’t, or he’d know that in addition to her three husbands, she’s been with a man who fathered one of her daughters and, more recently and disastrously, with Jack Nitzl, the underhanded used-car dealer who, inspired by her offhand remark about the home safe where Roop keeps the take from his bar, has staged a home invasion together with cranked-up body-shop owner Nicky Bortolotti—who, surprised to see Roop entertaining retired basketball player Highwire Harris and not that crazy about African-Americans anyway, has capped the evening by shooting the athlete. It gets worse. Jack, catching a glimpse of Dana as he flees the scene, threatens to give her up to the cops as a willing co-conspirator unless she feeds him information on every move Max is making. And Nicky, for whom personal loyalty is a lot less important than his next fix, is getting more and more impatient with anybody he thinks might be onto him.
Patton keeps the pot boiling briskly in the deceptively laid-back manner of Elmore Leonard, but his real gift is to get inside his driven characters—from sky-high Nicky to basically nice Dana to Max, dazed by a love too good to be true—and evoke the energy and frequent sweetness behind their improbable ardor.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-765-30649-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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