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SEASONED GREETINGS

Name: SEASONED GREETINGS
Author: John E. Hakala
ISBN: 978-0615540771

by John E. Hakala ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 11, 2011

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An evil corporation takes its pursuit of consumer loyalty to a whole new level in this corporate espionage novel.

There’s an unabashedly old-fashioned adventure story at the heart of Hakala’s lean, tensely plotted novel, a throwback adventure in which the good guys might say things like, “You'll never get away with this!” and the bad guys might reply, “Oh, but I shall.” Hakala marries his melodrama to a precisely controlled, contemporary plot and fills the whole thing with snappy dialogue. Two seemingly irreconcilable stories kick off the book: former Wall Street “king of the hill” Thornton “Thorny” Walsh has been relegated to a basement office in the wake of his firm’s merger with a gigantic Wall Street outfit, and idealistic Boston police officer Traci Ross is investigating a baffling series of rapes. These two separate worlds are brought together when an extremely shady businessman, hiding behind the shell of an innocent-seeming pet food company, begins a carefully orchestrated (and effectively described—Hakala is skilled at plot kinetics) plan to subvert the world economy. True to the Sam Spade template, Walsh stoically endures quite a bit of danger (including threats from a gigantic Samoan who “eats cops for breakfast”) and manhandling in order to uncover the villain’s diabolical plans. Ross is a considerably less fleshed-out character (and, despite her vocation, far less capable of taking care of herself in tight situations), but the book’s chemistry saves her from being the post-modern concession she might otherwise have become. Still, it’s Walsh who keeps things moving forward (and who gets all the best lines). He’s never very likable, but he makes the novel work. Despite Hakala’s evident zeal on the subject of food additives and government quality controls, the book never descends into polemic; this is first and foremost entertainment. An engaging, well-executed thriller.

Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2011

ISBN: 978-0615540771

Page Count: 363

Publisher: Cressida

Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2012

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.