Bruen's plotting has improved since The Hackman Blues (1998). But this second volume in a proposed trilogy (A White Arrest,...
For the moment, the bad guys are having it all their way. Sean and Josie knife Det. Sgt. Brant in the back before hotfooting it to Noo Yawk; Roy ``The Alien'' Fenton, just out of prison, on hire from southend London master criminal Bill, trashes Brant's flat, destroys his collection of Ed McBain novels, and scares the bejesus out of him with a teakettle of scalding water. When Sean is killed while attempting a mugging, Brant is dispatched to America to extradite Josie, little knowing that The Alien is now a continent away in San Francisco preparing to murder his former girlfriend and her new husband before taking a well-earned Mexico sabbatical. Back in London, Brant's protégé Falls, newly pregnant but still tyreiron tough, is hospitalized after being waylaid in a snooker hall, and Brant’s chief inspector, Roberts, can't find anyone who’ll let him whine for a moment about his skin cancer. And let's not forget Bill the mastermind, who sends an overeager shooter called Collie to the airport to greet Brant on his return, with fatal results when Collie mistakes Josie for Brant's girlfriend.
Bruen's plotting has improved since The Hackman Blues (1998). But this second volume in a proposed trilogy (A White Arrest, not reviewed) still quotes popculture icons and offers cute little lists (``Things to look for in a potential hit man: 1. Patience. 2. Cool. 3. Absolute ruthlessness'') in a hopeless attempt to update a noir attitude sealed in 50-year-old amber.Pub Date: April 17, 2000
ISBN: 1-899344-49-7
Page Count: 158
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2000
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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