It's the mid-1990s, and Russia has conquered Europe, with Britain (rotted with leftists from within) surrendering to a Soviet "peace-keeping force" and the US "neutralized" by having its intelligence apparatus totally sabotaged. There's only one hope to avoid nuclear holocaust (China's ready to decimate the whole western world): Operation Golgotha, a plan created back in the 1970s that involves missiles already secreted throughout Europe (aimed at the USSR), with details of the plan divided up and hypnotically implanted in the minds of assorted undercover British agents (a novelist, a theater director, etc.). So the US Prez (Ted Kennedy, apparently) activates Golgotha by sneaking US-based British agent Paul Fadden back into England, complete with the code-sentence that will unlock the Golgotha info from these hypnotized agents, whom he must identify and track down one by one. Inevitably Fadden falls in love with one of the agents, and—in various guises, with USSR/British authorities hot on their trail—the on-the-run lovers locate the supersecret underground-in-a-forest control room where they can deploy the 250 nuclearwarheaded missiles now hidden in Scotland and elsewhere. So the finale has Fadden and loyal Mary holed up in the control center (with the Russians trying to bomb them out), waiting for the go-ahead signal from the Prez—who's at a summit in neutral Dublin, trying to use the missile threat (one is actually fired, into unpopulated Siberia) to blackmail the USSR into full retreat. Nonsensical, pseudo-Buchanesque folderol, of course—not helped much by cutesy 1990s touches (Bernstein's Eighth Symphony is played, Dame V. Redgrave hobbles by on a cane) or lots of lazy, cliched prose. But Gardner (author of The Werewolf Trace etc., and not to be confused with the US novelist of the same name) is always an agreeably straightforward storyteller, confident and professional enough to squeak by with even so foolish a concoction as this one.
Pub Date: Nov. 9, 1980
ISBN: 0425095827
Page Count: 292
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1980
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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