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
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
