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WATCH BY MOONLIGHT

A fine idea for a romance novel, but unfortunately lacking the wild, die-for-you passion of the original.

A labored retelling of Alfred Noyes’s famous poem The Highwayman.

Bess Whateley is tired of serving ale to poor Dorset farmers who can’t even manage a tuppence tip. And she has twice the work to do since Rose Allen, the other barmaid at the King’s Shilling, was sacked for shorting drunken customers—when she wasn’t whoring with them. Bess and her mother toil and scrub with no end in sight—until Jason Quick, a highwayman, comes along. Jason doesn’t want beautiful, black-haired Bess to know anything about his life of crime; he sees no reason to tell the innocent girl that he once bedded Rose Allen, or that Rose was the mistress of Willy Boston, a rambunctious highwayman known as the Golden Fleecer. What Rose doesn’t know won’t hurt her, either: that Jason shot Willy dead in revenge for Willy’s murder of his traveling companion. As for the money Willy stole from Jason . . . ’twas mostly spent. As for Jason’s beloved father, he will have to stay in America, whence he was transported after months of languishing in debtor’s prison. Yes, Jason is a nice highwayman, taking money only from the overfed gentlemen who can afford it anyway and sparing the ladies and their jewelry. Tim Groot, the loutish stablehand at the King’s Shilling and in love with luscious Bess, is much put out by her preference for dashing Jason. And Tim’s just bright enough to figure out that Jason may be the new Golden Fleecer. Together with the redoubtable Sergeant Roddy Hallow—and with Rose, who knows now that Jason killed her lover—a trap is set. Bess is trussed up with a shotgun at the inn’s upper window, flanked by hidden marksmen as all await Jason in the moonlight. She wriggles one hand free to fire the gun in warning but kills herself unintentionally. Jason escapes but returns to avenge his true love.

A fine idea for a romance novel, but unfortunately lacking the wild, die-for-you passion of the original.

Pub Date: July 12, 2001

ISBN: 0-380-81465-X

Page Count: 229

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2001

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MAGIC HOUR

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

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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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