This first from Robinson, a globetrotter and former gem dealer, has all the makings of an old-style Ripping Yarn—but the...
A giant gemstone drives men mad.
Lonny Cushman, American ex-pat running as far as he can from his overbearing father, a Manhattan gem dealer, and from an upcoming custody battle with his bitchy ex-wife, drifts to the impoverished but weirdly fascinating land of Madagascar, where even garbage has value, though human life is cheap. How low can a man go? The neighborhood she-goat is looking good, but Lonny avoids sexual temptation of any kind, fearing AIDS and emotional involvement. He travels north, where sapphires have been discovered by desperate peasants, and is offered an extraordinary treasure: an enormous, flawless sapphire. Bonus: the uncut crystal contains a perfect star deep within its matchless blue depths. Paying US$20,000 (the equivalent of a herd of much-prized zebu to the sapphire’s finder, who is ignorant of its true worth), Lonny heads back to the seamy port city of Diego-Suarez, knowing he can’t leave the island without being searched. Maybe ebony-skinned Malika, a CIA op ostensibly with the American embassy, will help him. (Her designer short-shorts and high heels are a big improvement over the she-goat.) Malika is willing to share his bed but balks at anything else. Suddenly, thuggish army officers seem to know all about the sapphire—though Lonny has said not a word. But this is Madagascar, land of mud, misery, and mysterious mayhem, where trees have ears, etc. Thanks to a fisherman, Lonny eventually sneaks off to Cape Town and a rendezvous with an Arab sheik, descendant of a Zanzibar sultan, who buys the gem for a hundred million dollars, convinced that it’s the legendary sapphire known as the Vision, which inspired prophecies and wondrous dreams. Hey, maybe that’s why Lonny’s been able to telegraph the plot all along!
This first from Robinson, a globetrotter and former gem dealer, has all the makings of an old-style Ripping Yarn—but the amateurish prose clunk-clunk-clunks.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-06-052725-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2003
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
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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