Just the thing for readers who think there’s nothing worse than trying to sell your house in the suburbs.
Veteran suspense-monger Saul (Midnight Voices, 2002, etc.) manages to mess up the foolproof story of a family whose teenaged daughter is kidnapped.
The strain of Steve Marshall’s backbreaking commute to his law firm means that his family’s got to pull up stakes from Camden Green, on Long Island’s North Shore. But although his wife Kara gamely makes the rounds of Manhattan brownstones, their daughter Lindsay refuses to accept the inevitable. She’s been waiting to hear if she’ll be named head cheerleader for her senior year, and she’s not about to leave her squad, her friends and the only world she knows. Although Saul spends forever maundering over the Marshalls’ squabbles, they’re small potatoes compared to the main course. A madman who’s already sneaked into Patrick Shields’s house, burned it down and left his wife and two daughters dead now has his eye on Lindsay. Taking advantage of that most innocuous of all social occasions, the realtor-sponsored open house, he strolls into the Marshalls’ home not once but twice, first to snoop around and take a souvenir, then to snatch Lindsay. Numb Steve alternates between despair and denial (he’s soon back at work), and Kara works feverishly to mobilize the neighborhood. But stolid Sgt. Andrew Grant is convinced that unhappy Lindsay’s simply run away. Wrong. She’s shackled in the basement dungeon of the man the press will soon be calling “Open House Ozzie,” and she’s not the only one. Fortunately for readers with weak hearts, her captor is so literal-minded in his psychosis that the longer he toys with his captives, the less menacing he becomes. There’ll be more violence, more toothless threats (“Drink, or you might die too soon”) and of course more casualties, but nothing involving anybody you care about.
Just the thing for readers who think there’s nothing worse than trying to sell your house in the suburbs.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2005
ISBN: 0-345-46731-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2005
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
BOOK REVIEW
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