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WILDFIRE

Goddard's ultimately tepid thriller gets off to a quick start but never manages to build on its initial momentum. US Fish and Wildlife Service covert operations badass Henry Lightstone and his jocular yet equally badass buddies have a knack for stumbling into the right place at the right time—usually just after a firefight has erupted. For their latest adventure in accidental timing (or is it simply dumb luck?), they pick up the trail of the corporate doom meisters from the International Commission for Environmental Restoration (ICER), whose plans to terrorize the worldwide Green movement Lightstone and his team thought they had thwarted in Prey (1992). Thrust into the sequel, however, is a deadly new variable: an assassin hired by Wildfire, ICER's militant environmentalist opposition, to take down both the committee and those pesky F&W agents. Wildfire's man, a six-foot-ten-inch cipher known only as Riser, is the angel of death, but he meets his match in Lightstone and company. Docile guppy guardians these government boys are not: They're more like ultrabutch eco-cowboys, tempting the disapproval of their superiors and telling bad jokes under a hail of bullets. They wrestle hammerhead sharks bare-handed. They crack sophisticated computer systems. They practice karate. Moving his superheroes to a showdown in the Bahamas, Goddard displays his considerable knowledge of everything from endangered species to boating to guns. On matters of detail, the director of the National Fish and Wildlife Forensic Laboratory shows himself to be a Field & Stream Tom Clancy. Women, however, are interesting mostly for their muscle tone. A welter of technobabble, along with some harrowing action sequences and the reappearance of old enemies, can't keep the novel from floundering as Lightstone and his pals zero in on Wildfire's plot to torch Yellowstone National Park. Gets by on swagger and bravura and a steady diet of shoot- outs—but just barely. (Author tour)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994

ISBN: 0-312-85424-2

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Forge

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994

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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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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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