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
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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