A comically eccentric detective gets a terrific and fitting send-off.
In this fourth installment of a series, a private eye—out of commission for nearly a year—tries to regain lost memories and stumbles on a nefarious plot.
Sixty-year-old Max Bowman has no idea how he ended up in “the Community.” He knows he’s a former CIA operative, but the last few years of his life are a blank. After Howard, an old friend, visits, Max learns he’s in a Florida retirement home (of sorts) for agents who may know too much. He stops taking his medicine and makes a daring escape via motorized cart. But the life he’s slowly remembering has drastically changed in only 10 months. His girlfriend, Angela Davidson, has wed lobbyist Dudley “Duds” DeCosta. It’s not a happy marriage and Duds readily agrees to a divorce at Max’s request. The condition is that the private investigator must attend fundraisers for Sen. Eddie di Pineda’s reelection campaign. Max’s vouching for him will ease the senator’s ties to conspiracies swirling around the detective’s last few cases. At the same time, Max believes an enemy he thought he killed is still alive, at least according to cryptic, grammatically inaccurate texts he’s receiving. Soon, the PI and Angela’s son, Jeremy, called PMA (for Power, Mind, Action), find themselves in the middle of another conspiracy of worldwide proportions. As in earlier books, Canfield’s (Red Earth, 2017, etc.) latest entry—supposedly the final volume starring Max—boasts an often humorous tale and a progressively convoluted plot. Though initially the hero is simply piecing together returning memories, the story ultimately focuses on the mysterious yet clearly sinister scheme. But the best moments involve Max’s reunion with Angela and PMA. Max even acts like a nosy father to “the kid,” asking about his love life and offering his unsolicited opinion that PMA’s last boyfriend “wasn’t the right guy.” Max has been cynical throughout the series, but in this bracing and enjoyable tale, readers will surely sympathize with him as he hears what he’s missed (primarily in 2017). His reaction to Donald Trump as president and Coke Zero becoming Coke Zero Sugar is apropos: “What the hell had happened to the world in the past ten months?”
A comically eccentric detective gets a terrific and fitting send-off.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9975707-3-1
Page Count: 376
Publisher: joined at the hip
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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