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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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