A debut thriller by U.S. News journalist (and former Berlin bureau chief) Marks, who takes us on a wild-goose chase through Eastern Europe during Communism’s last days. Most East Germans may have figured out by 1989 that Honecker’s jig was up, but Western observers—led by the intelligence agencies—remained blissfully unprepared for the storm that broke out that particular November. Army Intelligence officer Nester Cates, stationed in West Berlin, was more surprised than most: Taken aback when the Hungarians open their borders to the West, he is positively stupefied when the East Germans follow suit. It is hard for Cates to share in the general elation, you see, since his friend and fellow officer Stuart Glemmik has gone AWOL just hours before a freak accident(smelling of sabotage)kills a civilian technician at Cates’s post. Glemmik, by virtue of his disappearance, becomes the prime suspect, and Cates is given 24 hours to find him, or face the charges himself. How do you scare up an American who disappears into East Berlin on the precise day that all of East Berlin has gone West? Through your contacts, of course—and if you’re looking for Stuart Glemmik, then try his German girlfriend Uta Silk and his brother Douglas conveniently in town on Stuart’s invitation. Since they are as mystified as Cates by Stuart’s disappearance, the three team up to launch the most hopeless manhunt since Stanley went after Livingstone. Like all good thrillers, this one doesn’t stay in one place very long, and the investigation also gets played out against the elections in Prague and the assassinations in Bucharest. At the end, of course, Cates finds what everyone else discovered at the close of 1989: a new world. Unremarkable as a story, but with good touches of local color. Cold War buffs and glÑsnost groupies will go for it; others may feel left out in the cold.
Pub Date: Sept. 8, 1998
ISBN: 1-57322-122-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1998
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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