A well-paced, attention-grabbing mystery that explores universal health care.
A debut thriller shines a spotlight on the potential for abuse in a national health care system.
McCall’s book centers on two siblings. Gordon Sand is a missing-persons detective in the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department’s Second District. Ada Sand, his sister, is an information systems specialist at the Department of Health and Human Services, much like the author herself was. Ada’s star has been on the rise during the preparations for the national health system called Americare, a priority of the new U.S. president, Dale Durham. The siblings split their time between Washington and bucolic Dorsey, Pennsylvania, where their doctor brother, David, and his family settled, next door to the Benedicts, a German Baptist clan. But Gordon’s and Ada’s worlds are destined to collide. That’s because Americare favors the rich and powerful through its tier system. Even worse, Americare’s leaders contract with an ex-soldier to kidnap well-matched citizens for body parts in order to keep sick Tier 1 VIPs alive. Based on the techniques used by this “Taker,” Gordon sees connections among seemingly random abductions, although Ada and his partner, Scottie Davenport, are skeptical. Then the Taker targets a Sand family member. Will Gordon and company expose Americare’s secrets? Using the guise of a mystery, McCall asks hard questions about the specifics of a national health care plan. Will it be equally available to all citizens? Or will those who are considered to have contributed more to society gain priority access? The author examines the latter option by creating a nightmare scenario in which ordinary people are sacrificed to keep the mighty and their families alive. Those just plain folks also end up waiting long months for “elective” surgeries that could enhance their quality of life. McCall has created likable characters in the extended Sand family as well as a nasty group of conniving health care bureaucrats. Particularly intriguing are the Benedicts, who live a simple lifestyle much like the Amish. Ultimately, McCall’s novel is an enjoyable blend of thriller, character study, and think piece.
A well-paced, attention-grabbing mystery that explores universal health care.Pub Date: March 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9845589-4-0
Page Count: 296
Publisher: JJ Publishers
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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