Notable mainly for the hero’s many disquietingly hallucinatory moments, often concerning utterly unimportant matters, and...
A former Pittsburgh cop battling his own formidable demons is hired to investigate the well-nigh-impossible murder of a businessman who was shot outside his home in rural Pennsylvania.
Whoever killed Peter Lanskard, the well-guarded owner of Mountain Resources Solutions, penetrated the security perimeter around his estate, covered the distance to the killing ground in record time, fired a single perfect .308 shot from an impressive distance, and then disappeared just as quickly, all while MRS security chief Brady Mason looked on in shock. Only a trained skier who was also a trained shooter could have pulled off the murder. So why hasn’t Washaway Township Police Chief Sally Colby identified the killer in the year since? Partly because Lanskard’s nearest neighbors, Olympian wrestler Seth Wrangle and his brother, David, are running a camp to train biathletes to shoot and ski, providing Colby dozens of potential suspects, partly because there’s not a scrap of evidence against the people Colby has made up her mind are responsible: the Wrangle brothers and their business partners, Linda and Jaden Fredrick, a husband-and-wife team whose job descriptions evidently include supplying alibis for each other. Called in to produce a solution in the week before the training camp ends for the year, scattering suspects to the winds, Trevor Galloway, whose career with the Pittsburgh narcotics squad ended when he shot a perp who was pulling a knife on him, suspects that his cop buddy Chase Vinson has recommended him for this impossible job mainly to keep him out of trouble. And with good reason: Galloway’s stint as an undercover narc climaxed when he was captured and forcibly hooked on heroin, and although he’s in recovery, he’s still not sure whether his earlier shooting really was righteous or whether he’s only imagining the signs of the Lithuanian killer he’s convinced is plotting a brutal revenge against him.
Notable mainly for the hero’s many disquietingly hallucinatory moments, often concerning utterly unimportant matters, and for the relentlessly ordinary prose against which Hensley (Measure Twice, 2014, etc.) sets them.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-946502-04-9
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Down & Out Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2017
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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