Consultants to a Washington law firm take on the Soviets who plan to sap America's military strength through the encouragement of excessive environmentalism—a first collaboration from Modesitt (The Magic of Recluce, p. 510) and newcomer Levinson, an environmental consultant. The cold war isn't really dead. It's now become the Green War as down-but-not-out Russians realize that growing American acceptance of environmentalism has made the nation vulnerable to its own bureaucracies and its mania for legislation. Newly powerful eco-freaks backed by devious foreign interests stride cockily through the District of Columbia dealing body blows to the departments of Defense and Commerce, shutting down essential industries and forcing the exodus of firms that need to work with hazardous materials. To the nation's rescue come two most unlikely heroes—Jack McDarvid and Johnnie Black—one a former bureaucrat from the EPA, the other a modestly dashing specialist in regulatory flimflam. The law firm that employs the two consultants has been retained by a giant Corsican industrial firm to stop—or at least slow—the latest legislative drive to ban one of their pesticides and to limit American use of critical heavy metals. McDarvid's knowledge of EPA personnel and procedures proves invaluable as he wields memos and letters in a concentrated attack on the agency and one of its oversight committees—and discovers midlevel corruption and congressional treachery in the battle. Maddening. The truly ingenious plot and the clever effort to put bureaucratic Washington under harsh light are largely undone by a Consumer Reports writing style.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-312-85212-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1991
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
BOOK REVIEW
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