The fact-based epic of an unconquerable WW II skipper's determination to escape the surrender of Corregidorpublished to coincide with the 50th anniversary of V-J Day. The Pacific theater, 1942. As Japanese Zeroes fire round after punishing round at the tiny Philippine island, Admiral Nimitz plans a counterstrike based on his cryptographers' success in cracking the Japanese military code: Knowing that Admiral Yamamoto plans to attack Midway on Emperor Hirohito's birthday, Nimitz will lure the Japanese Navy into a trap. Taking his cue from Lt. Cmdr. John H. Morrill's 1943 memoir South from Corregidor, Gobbell unfolds the tale of Lt. Todd Ingram, who commandeers a tiny boat in the last hours of the Japanese bombardment in defiance of the order to surrender. Ingram can't afford to be taken because only he knows that Cryptographer Walter Radtke is actually an Axis spy who's learned of Nimitz's trap and intends to pass the information on to Lt. Kiyoshi Tuga as soon as he can find his way to an unattended radio. Casting off from Corregidor in pursuit of Radtke against a frightful background of din and death, Ingram steams into nonstop actionand that's just the trouble with this sturdy, cluttered novel. Gobbell (The Brutus Lie, not reviewed) wants to paint the Pacific War in precise, unsparing strokes, making every shot resound while keeping his eye on Ingram's and Radtke's high- stakes game. But he's more successful at the first endeavor than the second, and less successful still at giving his heroic characters any depth or distinguishing features. The Axis rant and rape like the Yellow Peril in a propaganda short, and poor Ingram can't ``think of a worse combination than the hideous political systems [Radtke and Tuga] represented.'' Lacking Frederick Forsyth's alchemical ability to transform the minutiae of military intrigue into high-voltage suspense, Gobbell is left with a million dramatic details that never quite catch fire.
Pub Date: Aug. 14, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-13108-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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
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