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BLACK OUT

A severed human arm leads to an unholy web of spying, murder, and betrayal in war-torn London: a first novel from BBC-TV filmmaker Lawton. Sgt. Frederick Troy, treated with an uneasy combination of respect and suspicion because of his moneyed, foreign-born family, soon identifies the arm (some smart detective work here) as belonging to the late Bertoldt Brand, a specialist in lightweight alloys and rocketry who's evidently the latest to follow his project team— engineer Gregor von Ranke and professor-turned-dockworker Peter Wolinski—into the peace that passeth understanding. Conservative princess Lady Diana Brack, seen leaving Wolinski's flat, leads Troy to a likely suspect: OSS Major Jimmy Wayne, who obligingly implicates himself more deeply when a copper who wedges behind his car in a London pea-souper is found dead. But the trail stops there. According to the American high command, Wayne was in a meeting with Ike and Patton at the time of this last murder, and some other dude did it. So Troy, giving his days to interrogating Brack and his nights to slipping between the insistent sheets of Sgt. Larissa Tosca, his inside contact among the Americans, goes after Wayne on his own. The result, as Troy totes it up toward the end of this beautifully paced debut: He gradually gets a sense of just what Wayne's mission in Britain is, and why his superiors would be so willing to cover for him; he gets shot twice, stabbed four times, bombed twice, and beaten up more times than he can count; and in an overextended but crucial epilogue four years later, he finds that the plots he thought he'd laid to rest were more twisted than he'd ever imagined. Gorky Park in the London Blitz. Newcomer Lawton has an urban documentarist's eye and ear for his jangled world—London has seldom seemed quite so foreign—and a nasty sense of how little slips can indeed sink ships.

Pub Date: May 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-670-85767-X

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1995

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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

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MAGIC HOUR

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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