Soviet spy maven Finder (The Moscow Club, 1991) adapts to the disappearance of the Red Menace—without missing a step—by following the trail of $10 billion spirited out of Russia to protect it from hard-liners: a fortune in gold that's rearranging a lot of loyalties from Moscow to Washington. The hunt for the money begins when Ben Ellison—a former CIA loose cannon who's taken refuge in patent law from his bloody past (his wife Laura was killed and his boss Toby Thompson paralyzed when an East German defection went horribly wrong) and from his hotheaded nature—is pressed by CIA-director-designate Alexander Truslow to go after Vladimir Orlov, the KGB chief who arranged the transfer of the gold. The transfer was done with the help of Harrison Sinclair— Truslow's predecessor at the Agency and the late father of Ben's second wife Molly—in return for a KGB file dishing the dirt on CIA higher-ups. When Ben turns Truslow down, a CIA investigation of his broker freezes his assets—and then, when Ben grudgingly agrees to cooperate, Truslow arranges a lie-detector screening that's actually a cover for giving Ben a jolt of the extrasensory, mind-reading powers Truslow thinks he'll need to track down Orlov and the money. What Ben's extraordinary powers tell him along the way, of course, is that his CIA masters aren't just interested in returning the gold to Mother Russia: the folks Orlov's file was fingering want to cover themselves and their grasp on the missing bullion by using Ben as a cat's paw and assassinating a mysterious witness before he can blow their covert operation sky-high in Congressional testimony. Can indestructible Ben, staggering from a brace of revelations about the deaths of Laura and Sinclair, identify the witness in time to stop the assassination—or will he be killed himself, as a prefatory note darkly hints? The complex story purrs along like a high-powered race car loaded with options, even though it all boils down to Telepathic Man and a bunch of lesser guys with guns after the big score. (First printing of 100,000)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-345-38621-3
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1993
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
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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