The indefatigable Gardner is at it again: fresh from his triumphant conclusion of the intricate, masterful Secret Generations trilogy with The Secret Families, he's boiling the pot once more with his eighth James Bond outing, just as predictable and expertly concocted as the others. This season's malign international conspiracy is the Brotherhood of Anarchy and Secret Terror (BAST), headed by a troika of terrorists code-named the Man, the Snake, and the Cat, but actually dedicated to enriching only one of them: Bassam Baradj (born Robert Besavitsky in HeWs Kitchen), who plans to collect the ransom of the century by infiltrating a secret meeting between President Bush; Prime Minister Thatcher, and Secretary Gorbachev aboard HMS Invincible and kidnapping the three heads of state. Bond's boss M gets wind of the threat to Invincible early on and assigns Bond back to active naval duty to protect the ship. Bond's skirmishes with the usual bevy of ambiguously alluring women—blue-blooded WRNS officer Clover Pennington; Neapolitan maid Beatrice da Ricci; Soviet Naval Attache Nikola Ratnikov—are presented with more conviction than usual. And although the plot twists—Bond is fired on during his initial run piloting a Sea Harrier; dangled invitingly in an Italian villa as an assassination target; and debriefed at a NATO installation temporarily (and preposterously) in the hands of his enemies before finally boarding Invincible, foiling BAST with his customary single-handed heroics, and unmasking the bad-guys-pretending-to-be-good-guys-pretending-to-be-bad-guys (and vice versa)—sound like a child's idea of international intrigue, Gardner manages to charm some real suspense out of Bond's attempts to guess who's on which side today. Despite too many acronyms, too much artillery, and too many layers of deceptive identity, this is still one of Gardner's better Bonds, guaranteed to make you feel excited as well as a little foolish.
Pub Date: July 24, 1989
ISBN: 0425122611
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1989
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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