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Think Zebras

Name: Think Zebras
Author: Kathryn Scott
ISBN: 978-0-692-66125-3

by Kathryn Scott ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 4, 2016

A medical mystery novel that has plenty of verisimilitude but lacks tension.

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Epidemiologist and public health expert Scott offers an epidemiological mystery that also focuses on workplace toxicity and political dysfunction.

Mary Campbell, a nurse supervisor for the Communicable Disease Control Unit in the Revere County Health Department, squares off against a mysterious norovirus outbreak that sickens and kills elderly nursing-home residents. Specifically, she investigates what’s causing the erratic patterns of illness that threaten the most vulnerable of the county’s citizens. This novel sets out to reveal just how frontline epidemiologists and nurses respond to public-health crises. Indeed, the author knows her subject well, and her thorough understanding of her subject gives the novel a sense of realism that is its greatest strength. The earnest, intrepid health workers in this book want to do all they can to protect the country against the illness assaulting Revere County, and they’re often concerned with office and public-health politics. Debut author Scott unwinds the central mystery so slowly that little dramatic tension develops; the plot gets lost in minutiae. The author even provides an organizational flowchart to show how Mary’s response team employs a new incident command structure for the outbreak. The story withholds the meaning of the book’s enigmatic title until more than halfway through, when Joe, Mary’s potential romantic interest and fellow investigator, asks about the source of the virus, “When you hear hoofbeats, think zebras, not horses?” A measles outbreak occurs along with the norovirus, and cases of meningitis also complicate the epidemiological quandary for Mary as she and her team try to think outside the box. The story’s many focal points, though, never give the story a sense of rising action.

A medical mystery novel that has plenty of verisimilitude but lacks tension.

Pub Date: March 4, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-692-66125-3

Page Count: 300

Publisher: Charles Clivie Publishing

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2016

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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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.