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A TYPICAL AMERICAN TOWN

Name: A TYPICAL AMERICAN TOWN
Author: John Maddox Roberts
ISBN: 0-312-11359-5

by John Maddox Roberts ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 11, 1994

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Historical specialist Roberts (King of the Wood, 1982, etc.) strides into the present with a lot more confidence than his hero, burned-out LAPD veteran Gabe Treloar, who bungles a suicide attempt on the road to a PI job in Cleveland. He then decides to follow the exit ramp to what turns out to be his old hometown—Monticello, Ohio, where his old pal Lew Czuk (now owner and editor of the local rag) and his old flame Lola Cohan (princess of the local first family) recognize him almost on sight after all these years, and where friendly landlady Edna Tutt can rent him a room in the house he grew up in. It's all too good to be true, of course, and Roberts pulls out all the stops when things go wrong: First Edna is killed after hours of torture; then Gabe's search into her past turns up a fabulously checkered history that ties her in to girlie magazines, a 30-year-old payroll robbery that left four people dead, and, inevitably, Ansel Cohan, the scalawag head of the Cohan clan; finally, a second murder leaves Gabe in the frame, pursued by the rapacious state prosecutor Ansel has lined up as Lola's consort. Luckily, Gabe gets some unlikely help from the local sheriff, whose father was one of the payroll victims, and a hungry reporter desperate to get out of Monticello—as who wouldn't be by this time? Despite too many obvious villains, Roberts's warmth and unsparing insight make the familiar story of Gabe's cathartic return home a special treat for Ross Macdonald fans.

Pub Date: Nov. 11, 1994

ISBN: 0-312-11359-5

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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CARRIE

by Stephen King ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 1974

King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...

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Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).

All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.

King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."