A fresh, snappy, and exhilarating adventure with a recurring hero.
As a hurricane rages, a treasure hunter searches Key West for a cache of drug money tied to his father in this seventh installment of a series.
Though it’s been nearly a decade since his parents’ deaths, Buck Reilly is just now going through their personal effects. He makes a startling discovery: Based on names and places his father, Charles B. Reilly Jr., had documented, Buck surmises he may have been a drug smuggler years before working for the State Department. Charlie had two partners: Frank Graves, who did a 20-year prison stint, and Tommy Diaz, who was murdered by the Medellín cartel. Buck hopes to shed light on his dad’s past by talking to Graves’ ex-wife, Eleanor, and Diaz’s daughter, Jade. They are both in Key West, where Buck also resides. But it turns out an unusual sketch among Charlie’s effects is part of a map to the partners’ drug fortune—and Jade has the other half. The two decide to work together despite the destructive path Hurricane Irma is taking toward Key West. So as locals wisely evacuate, Buck and Jade hunt for hidden cash. But they aren’t the only ones looking, and greed soon ignites a string of potentially lethal double crosses. From the start, Cunningham (Free Fall to Black, 2017, etc.) establishes the story’s uneasy atmosphere as Buck hears reports of ongoing hurricanes. Frequent details on the heavy rain and wind are reminders of the impending storm. The tempest likewise sets an impressive pace, as Buck and Jade have little time before their search area is flooded. The author subtly develops characters as the story progresses; it’s apparent, for example, based on Jade’s behavior, that she’s naturally skeptical of others. Readers will likely guess a few plot turns, but that doesn’t dilute the ever present threat of the hurricane. As in preceding novels, Buck is an admirable protagonist, a man who doesn’t hesitate to tighten the lines of someone else’s secured plane despite increasingly perilous weather.
A fresh, snappy, and exhilarating adventure with a recurring hero.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9987965-3-6
Page Count: 242
Publisher: Greene Street, LLC
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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