The beating death of a Catholic priest on a Logan Airport runway on New Year's Eve is only the beginning of this gritty first novel's magical mystery tour of 1965 Boston. Everybody says Father George Sedgewick was a saintly man. But to Ray Dunn, the Suffolk County D.A.'s Mr. Fixit, the brutal beating the priest took and the older, self-inflicted wounds of scapular and scourge point to some unspeakable sin his assailant was avenging. Unable to figure out why the killer stole the 4,000 consecrated hosts Sedgewick was bringing back from Rome for the historic first US English Mass, Ray concentrates on keeping his brother Biff, a rookie cop, out of trouble. It's not exactly a congenial assignment for Ray, whose life, irretrievably tainted by the shadow of his late bagman father, Patrolman Tim Dunn, and the years of dirty errands Ray himself has run for D.A. Johnny Cahill, has left him with ``no feel for honesty.'' But even if Ray were his brother's perfect keeper, it wouldn't matter, because Joe Mears, the scary druggie who killed Sedgewick, is on a collision course with Biff, though neither of them knows it. As Sgt. Manny Manning, Tim's unindicted partner who's anchoring Narcotics, follows a trail of lethally powerful new synthetic heroin through a maze of dead junkies to their know-nothing dealers, he's leaning more and more on Biff for help, sending him undercover to psych out the Dealer of Dealers—who'll turn out, of course, to be Mears, his brain addled by the secret electroshock therapy that erased his old identity without giving him anything new but a burning desire for revenge on everybody and everything that made him the zombie he is, and a network of drug contacts that put him in the perfect position to dish it out to everyone, from Biff Dunn to Cardinal Cushing. Gorgeously and audaciously plotted, with a trio of starring roles that would make a casting director salivate, even if he weren't being tested for drugs.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-393-03998-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1996
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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