Perky, aspiring newscaster Suzanne Maretto persuades her teenaged lover and his buddy to kill her straight-arrow husband; just deserts follow for all. Suzanne, who thinks that ``if people could just be on TV all the time, the whole human race would probably be a much better group of individuals,'' sets out to captivate the none-too-bright kids she's interviewing for a demo tape that'll get her out of her local (suburban Boston) station and onto the network fast track. There's Jimmy Emmet, who worships her as stupidly as does her hapless restaurant-family husband Larry; Russell Hines, who's just in it for the thousand dollars; and Lydia Mertz, who's so hopelessly smitten with Suzanne's big-sister glamour that she's willing to supply the gun. But the real culprits, as bestselling author/media-child Maynard (Baby Love, 1981; Domestic Affairs, 1987, etc.) keeps screaming in an amusingly flat series of self-revealing monologues, are Malibu Barbie, Victoria's Secret, Wheel of Fortune, abusive (or adoring) parents, and Donahue—all the accoutrements of cut-rate acculturation that give her characters such venal dreams and mindless determination. Maynard's ear for sincere garbage (``We're so connected, I can taste her Tic Tac,'' boasts Jimmy after Suzanne deflowers him) is as sharp as ever, but after 50 pages of such homogeneous stuff you'll start looking for the exit—unless, of course, your own taste for pulp romances of sex, power, and violence are just as depraved as the ones so lovingly excoriated here. What's most offensive here, as in Bret Easton Ellis's notorious American Psycho, is the raised-nostril pretense that this revolted attack on pop culture, already due for serialization in Penthouse, stands above it all. A more penetrating writer could have a field day analyzing recent popular fiction's disavowal of the tawdry culture that continues to grip it as tightly as Suzanne holds Jimmy.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-525-93396-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1991
Unlikable people and unlikely situations redeemed by decent writing and the only truly appealing character in the book: a...
A Pittsburgh woman finds she’s the prime suspect when her daughter’s kidnapped in Drake’s dark psychological thriller.
In July 2013, 3-year-old Sophia Lassiter disappears from a park where she’s playing only to show up a short time later unharmed except for a small mark on her arm that her mother believes might have been an injection site. Frightened, Sophia’s parents—professional photographer Jill and successful lawyer David—watch their child even more closely than usual. But despite their vigilance, one morning they climb out of bed and find that Sophia’s once again gone missing. While the police focus more and more on the beleaguered parents, a woman named Bea Walsh has been perfecting her evil plan to steal Sophia and see that Jill and David take the fall for her disappearance and faked death; her plan seems to be working. Meanwhile, the author flashes back to a journal written by an unknown woman to an unknown man, dissecting their affair and ultimate breakup. Drake builds suspense slowly and methodically, but many readers won’t stick around long enough to care: Jill’s a judgmental snob, Bea’s cruel and unhinged, David’s a detached social climber, and even Sophia, the toddler, comes across as a brat. Additionally, the series of events surrounding Sophia’s disappearance come across as contrived and implausible, with an over-the-top villain, a cop that dresses like a hooker, another cop who practically sneers his questions, and a hypercritical protagonist with a superiority complex.
Unlikable people and unlikely situations redeemed by decent writing and the only truly appealing character in the book: a little dog named Cosmo.Pub Date: March 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-06891-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
A strongly felt, if not terribly gripping, sendoff for a Turow favorite nearly 35 years after his appearance in Presumed...
Trying his final case at 85, celebrated criminal defense lawyer Sandy Stern defends a Nobel-winning doctor and longtime friend whose cancer wonder drug saved Stern's life but subsequently led to the deaths of others.
Federal prosecutors are charging the eminent doctor, Kiril Pafko, with murder, fraud, and insider trading. An Argentine émigré like Stern, Pafko is no angel. His counselor is certain he sold stock in the company that produced the drug, g-Livia, before users' deaths were reported. The 78-year-old Nobelist is a serial adulterer whose former and current lovers have strong ties to the case. Working for one final time alongside his daughter and proficient legal partner, Marta, who has announced she will close the firm and retire along with her father following the case, Stern must deal not only with "senior moments" before Chief Judge Sonya "Sonny" Klonsky, but also his physical frailty. While taking a deep dive into the ups and downs of a complicated big-time trial, Turow (Testimony, 2017, etc.) crafts a love letter to his profession through his elegiac appreciation of Stern, who has appeared in all his Kindle County novels. The grandly mannered attorney (his favorite response is "Just so") has dedicated himself to the law at great personal cost. But had he not spent so much of his life inside courtrooms, "He never would have known himself." With its bland prosecutors, frequent focus on technical details like "double-blind clinical trials," and lack of real surprises, the novel likely will disappoint some fans of legal thrillers. But this smoothly efficient book gains timely depth through its discussion of thorny moral issues raised by a drug that can extend a cancer sufferer's life expectancy at the risk of suddenly ending it.
A strongly felt, if not terribly gripping, sendoff for a Turow favorite nearly 35 years after his appearance in Presumed Innocent.Pub Date: May 12, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5387-4813-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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