For Klempner (Irreparable Damage, 2002), any point worth making is worth beating to death, and the early stages of this...
A retired judge is lured from his South Carolina hermitage to handle one last appeal for a Death Row inmate.
Sound familiar? Wait, you can predict even more details, as the judge himself instantly succeeds in doing. Hon. August Jorgenson was a celebrated opponent of the death penalty before he stepped down and into the hermit-like oblivion of his Outer Banks lighthouse (no computer, no phone, barely any mail). The advocates pressing for his involvement, director/anchor Jessica Woodruff and her colleagues at the upstart Trial TV network, are more interested in ratings than justice. The accused, Wesley Boyd Davies, is an autistic African-American, a prodigiously gifted artist who can speak barely a word, convicted 15 years ago of raping and killing his 11-year-old neighbor Ilsa Meisner in execution-happy Virginia. A parade of lawyers has run methodically through every last grounds for appeal save one: “Could a competent, sane, non-retarded individual, who was nonetheless incapable of understanding the connection between his criminal act and his execution, be put to death without violating the Eighth Amendment?” It all sounds like pretty recondite stuff until Jorgenson, agreeing to argue the case before the Supreme Court, finds evidence that strongly suggests his client is innocent, with confirmation (though no evidence he can take into court) readily available. The discovery would make Boy Davies’s day if he could understand it, but there’s no joy at Trial TV, where Jorgenson’s claim of actual innocence, which could fatally undermine their crusade against capital punishment, turns the grizzled justice into a potential liability. Wonder what will happen next?
For Klempner (Irreparable Damage, 2002), any point worth making is worth beating to death, and the early stages of this opus, which seem determined to mine the fog for every metaphoric possibility, are slow-going. Once the story kicks in, however, it proceeds to its foreordained conclusion with pleasing brio.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2003
ISBN: 0-312-31067-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Dunne/Minotaur
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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