Weston’s second is a rip-roaring yarn that enchants with beguiling descriptions of the beauty of the Idaho wilderness.
Cowboys, sheepherders, and moonshiners form a volatile mix in 1920s Idaho.
Independent-minded Nellie Burns (Moonshadows, 2015) left her Chicago home hoping to make a living as a photographer in what is still the wide-open West. Planning to take some pictures to sell to the railroad for brochures, she drives with her dog, Moonshine, to the mountains to meet sheep rancher Gwynn Campbell, who’s taking her and Basque sheepherder Alphonso to his sheep camp to replace Domingo, a herder reportedly gone round the bend from loneliness. They arrive to find Domingo long dead, having been badly beaten and with a gunshot wound in his head. With no sheriff in the area, Campbell goes to fetch Nell’s friend, the Basque sheriff known as Azgo, leaving Nell, Moonie, and Alphonso at the camp. Nell and her dog have already had a run-in with a cowboy, or maybe a moonshiner, and his dog. Given the tension between the cowmen, the sheep owners, and the dangerous moonshiners hidden in the hills, it’s hard to know whom to trust. Even lovely Pearl, who works in a saloon, often flirts with men although she’s supposedly married. When Nell is kidnapped, she has to depend on Pearl to help her escape. The pair have some wild adventures while Nell tries to untangle a knotty puzzle and stay alive.
Weston’s second is a rip-roaring yarn that enchants with beguiling descriptions of the beauty of the Idaho wilderness.Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-432-83298-8
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Gale Cengage
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Furiously suspenseful, but brain-dead second volume in Child’s gratuitously derivative Jack Reacher action series (Killing Floor, 1997). Reacher, a former Army Military Police Major, has now moved on to Chicago, where he gallantly assists a beautiful mystery woman hobbling on a crutch with her dry cleaning. Seconds later, Reacher and the woman, FBI agent Holly Johnson (also daughter of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as goddaughter of the President), are kidnaped by armed gunmen. Handcuffed together and tossed in the back of a van, the two are taken to the Montana mountain stronghold of Beau Borken, a fat, ugly, psychopathically vicious neo-Nazi militia leader given to sawing the arms off day laborers and making windy speeches about how he brilliant he is. Of course, the kidnappers don’t know that they have a former military police major in their clutches who, in addition to having a Silver Star for heroism, is one of the best snipers the Army has ever produced, can pull iron rings out of barn doors, and kill bad guys with lit cigarettes. Meanwhile, a team of FBI agents, at least one of whom is a mole leaking information to Borken, identify Reacher from a reconstructed photo taken from the dry cleaner’s surveillance camera. Borken, impressed with Reacher’s military record, lectures him about his brilliant plan to overthrow the US using a hijacked Army missile unit, with Holly held as a hostage in a specially constructed, dynamite-lined prison cell. Borken stupidly lets Reacher best him in a shooting match, then grandiosely turns his back on his captives enough times for Reacher and Holly to escape, cause havoc, get captured, escape, make love in the woods, cause more havoc, and get captured again, as General Johnson, FBI Director Harlan Webster, and General Garber, Reacher’s former commander, plan a covert strike on Borken’s fortress that’s certain to fail. Another Rogue Warrior meets Die Hard with all the typical over-the-top plotting, blood-splattering ultraviolence, lock-jawed heroics and the dumbest villains this side of Ruby Ridge.
Pub Date: July 20, 1998
ISBN: 0-399-14379-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1998
An overly anodyne attempt at Southern gothic.
A series of unfortunate errors consigns a Baltimore nurse to a loveless marriage in the South.
It’s 1943, and Tess, from Baltimore’s Little Italy, is eagerly anticipating her upcoming nuptials. Her frustration grows, though, when her physician fiance, Vincent, accepts an extended out-of-town assignment to treat polio patients. On an impromptu excursion to Washington, D.C., Tess has too many martinis, resulting in a one-night stand with a chance acquaintance, a furniture manufacturer from North Carolina named Henry. Back in Baltimore, Tess’ extreme Catholic guilt over her indiscretion is compounded by the discovery that she’s pregnant. Eschewing a back-street abortion, she seeks out Henry in hopes of arranging child support—but to her shock, he proposes marriage instead. Once married to Henry and ensconced in his family mansion in Hickory, North Carolina, Tess gets a frosty reception from Henry’s mother, Miss Ruth, and his sister, Lucy, not to mention the other ladies of Hickory, especially Violet, who thought she was Henry’s fiancee. Tess’ isolation worsens after Lucy dies in a freak car accident, and Tess, the driver, is blamed. Her only friends are the African-American servants of the household and an African-American medium who helps her make peace with a growing number of unquiet spirits, including her mother, who expired of shock over Tess’ predicament, and Lucy, not to mention the baby, who did not make it to full term. The marriage is passionless but benign. Although Henry tries to be domineering, he always relents, letting Tess take the nurses' licensing exam and, later, go to work in Hickory’s historic polio hospital. Strangely, despite the pregnancy’s end, he refuses to divorce Tess. There are hints throughout that Henry has secrets; Lucy herself intimates as much shortly before her death. Once the polio hospital story takes over, the accident is largely forgotten, leading readers to suspect that Lucy’s death was a convenient way of postponing crucial revelations about Henry. Things develop predictably until, suddenly and belatedly, the plot heats up in an unpredictable but also unconvincing way.
An overly anodyne attempt at Southern gothic.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-08727-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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