High moral tone, low narrative appeal.
Corruption, Southern style: Good-old-boy power brokers are challenged by an idealistic newspaper publisher in this lumbering debut.
Buck Ravenel learned how the world works at his exclusive prep school. As a squeaky-clean prefect he had reported his roomie to the headmaster for an infraction. The headmaster finessed matters, pressuring the roomie’s father for a donation. Everybody won; favors trumped rules; the titular Code had been observed. Now, in 1995, Buck is a powerful state senator in South Carolina, and his son Tripp is director of the state’s environmental agency. When a phosphate company applies for a permit to strip-mine near Georgetown, on the coast, and his agency’s in-house report is negative, Tripp has it deep-sixed. Like father, like son. There will be a sweet business deal if the permit is approved; Buck and his partners will profit. Just one problem: A young black paralegal has obtained the original report and passed it to the local paper, on condition his identity is protected. The paper runs the story. Buck sues, seeking millions in damages. It’s time for Wade McNabb, the crusading publisher, to enlist the help of Kate Stewart, an equally idealistic lawyer. Let battle commence! Unfortunately, it doesn’t. First we must plow through Wade and Kate’s back stories. Wade’s father had been a hero, standing up for black folks, losing the paper after an advertisers’ boycott, and eventually killing himself. Kate’s dad had been a successful tobacco buyer who became consumed with guilt once the lung cancer connection became clear. So the high-minded dead loom large over a couple destined for each other, though not quite yet. They spend a day on a remote beach, but he’s the perfect gentleman and she’s the perfect lady, making for a perfect snooze. The judge in the long-delayed courtroom scenes is a good old hunting buddy of Buck, so the fix is in. Will right over might prevail?
High moral tone, low narrative appeal.Pub Date: May 4, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9841073-5-3
Page Count: 374
Publisher: Joggling Board Press
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2012
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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