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
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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