Weighty with nervous fears detailed at length, yet gripping all the way.
Fast and literate suspense by an ex-con and former narc (The Catch, 1998, etc.).
Wozencraft’s life experiences stand in well for her story about 24-year-old female cop Diane Wellman, in Bolton, Texas, who is falsely accused of cocaine possession and sentenced to a federal prison where she bunks with Gail Rubin, who has been in for 20 years, just watched her parole interview go south, and has 12 more years to go. She too was falsely accused of being part of an aggressive civil-rights team’s successful bank robbery that caused two deaths. When arrested, she’d also supposedly been in possession of a cellar full of firearms and explosives. As a cop, Diane had come upon a triple murder in the woods and seen the white murderer as he fled. The police chief, however, jails a black perp, who lands on death row. To shut Diane up, the chief has her doped with knockout drops, plants cocaine in her fridge, and alerts the DEA to arrest her. At first, Diane just wants to serve her ten years, but when Gail prepares for a jailbreak Diane decides to go along, head back for Bolton, and find some transcripts that will exonerate her and free the perp on death row. The two women manage their escape but find that, as they flee, life on the outside is far more harrowing than life in a cell. Both turn paranoid about pursuit and the cop that may walk up to them at any moment and send them back to jail. They thumb a ride to Manhattan, pick up Gail’s family money, get fancy hair styling and bright garb, entrain to Chicago, then separate and meet up in Oklahoma City. Although the suspense remains heavy, the larger subject is the mental state of being prison-breakers wanted in a nationwide manhunt. The two plan to fly to France—but first Diane must clear her name.
Weighty with nervous fears detailed at length, yet gripping all the way.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-312-28959-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2004
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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