An Acting President's power grab involves both constitutional challenge and military coup in this near-future political melodrama, with which Batchelor (Peter Nevsky and the True Story of the Russian Moon Landing, 1993, etc.) makes his own grab for a large, action-oriented readership. It's 2003. In January, Democratic President Teddy Jay, abandoned by his wife and deeply depressed, entered the hospital, using the 25th Amendment to transfer his duties to Vice President Shy Garland. The story begins five months later with a military exercise, Garland's brainchild, that culminates with the shooting of a stand-in President by Col. Red Schofield, commander of the operation. As Jay, claiming recovery, prepares to rejoin his wife and resume the presidency, Garland mounts his constitutional challenge; only if it fails will he resort to the military option (code-named Father's Day). Message: ``The biggest son of a bitch...in national politics,'' for whom life is a baseball game, will do anything to win. The contest, though, is unequal: Jay is a wimp who must rely on his political enemies to restore him to power. These include Republicans like naval war hero and presidential hopeful Jack Longfellow and Longfellow's wife, Jean, the Senate Minority Leader. They get a boost when designated shooter Schofield leaks to sister Toni, who (happy coincidence) is Longfellow's mistress. During their rush to Occupied Moldova (Uncle Sam is world policeman again) to get a written statement from Schofield, Jack and Toni behave like everyone else in the book, playing with shiny new technology and racing for planes as they hurry up and wait for a twisty, improbable denouement. That's the action here, aside from a Clancy-esque rattle of hardware at the start and close. Batchelor's dubious premise (would America really give its president five months off for therapy?) and his skin-deep characterizations make for a disappointing concoction. (First printing of 100,000; film rights to Cinergi; author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8050-3266-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
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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