Mortimer (Titmuss Regained, 1991, etc.) returns with a neatly plotted, fast-paced entertainment—a mix of suspense and social comedy that disturbs stereotypes by pitting an overly zealous muckraking journalist against a sympathetic pillar of the Establishment. Narrator Philip Progmire is an amiable, passive fellow who didn't choose to be an accountant (his father-in-law got him the job at Megapolis Television) any more than he chose his wife Beth (Ophelia to his Hamlet at Oxford). Journalist Dick Dunster is his polar opposite, a hair shirt who despises success and fearlessly pursues the truth, even when it hurts friends and loved ones. He chose Philip as his friend when they were London schoolboys and remained an ``inescapable'' factor in his life until he absconded with Beth, leaving Philip to console himself in middle age with his teenaged daughter and amateur theatricals. There are the makings here of an arresting novel of character, but Mortimer concentrates instead on the suspense that arises when Dunster, writing a series on War Crimes for Megapolis, charges that its chairman, Sir Crispin (Cris) Bellhangar, was responsible for the deaths of women and children when he ordered a church demolished in northern Italy during WW II. Since Philip admires Cris, an unpretentious boss and honorable man, and is convinced that Dunster's allegations are worthless, he surprises himself by standing up to his old nemesis. Dunster is accused of libel; suspense builds with the tracking down of old soldiers and a surprise witness during the trial. The melodramatic denouement is a reminder of the moral complexity of battlefield decisions. The disappointment here is that Mortimer doesn't do much with Dunster, who recedes from view as the plot thickens; still, his latest is just provocative enough to keep readers alert and amused.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-670-84059-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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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