Using his background as a 20-year Navy legal-eagle, Lane adds perfectly credible soul-searching to create an honest and...
A sailor seeking solace while in the throes of a separation gets the ride of his life when his bedmate proves to be a trashy novelist who uses him as material, spurring the Navy to get on its moral high-horse: a true-grit follow-up to Lane’s Duty (1999).
A bar, a pat on the knee, a weekend of sex . . . it didn’t amount to much in the career of officer Neal Olen, 44, who transcended that rough patch in his marriage, became a hero for saving the life of a boy who fell overboard, and retired to a second career as a consultant for a weapons contractor. Unfortunately, though, his weekend becomes chapter six of Navy Wench, and when author Angela Vance lets slip that someone much like Neal was the model for the male character, the reaction from on high is swift. Given the possibility of security breaches, his clearances are yanked and Neal immediately loses his consulting job, but, more than that, he’s recalled to active duty in order to face a court-martial for adultery and conduct unbecoming. Hiring an ace attorney who revels in cases like his—they give her a chance to avenge those former colleagues who hounded her out of the service for being gay—Neal wins a pretrial hearing only to have the judge’s ruling overturned and the trial proceed. An unauthorized meeting with Angela brings him face-to-face with her enraged ex (to whom she was married when she dallied with Neal), who puts him in the hospital. A further adventure—a shootout that gets the ex killed—persuades Neal to live up to his code of honor and put himself at the mercy of the jury of his peers.
Using his background as a 20-year Navy legal-eagle, Lane adds perfectly credible soul-searching to create an honest and heartfelt courtroom drama of agenda-driven military intransigence at odds with personal integrity.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002
ISBN: 1-882593-59-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Bridge Works
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2002
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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