Fourth thriller by Balling (Champion, 1988, etc.), this time focused on the Second Coming rather than on Nazis or 12th-century knights and ladies. Recently discovered in Samaria are scrolls and some mummified flesh and bone relating to Simon Magus (or Simon the Magician), a contemporary of Jesus who converted to Christianity. The scrolls, it seems, hold an incantation that needs the actual skin to work its magic. In a Harvard lab, young Allison Reese is checking the DNA in the flesh. When televangelist Bobby Jordan hears of all this, he sends his son and another heavy to get the skin, and the two leave Allison comatose. Meanwhile, Michael Beretta, in still another effort to recover the skin, is dispatched by Opus Dei, the CIA of the Vatican, to recruit help in breaking into Bobby Jordan’s island paradise and fabulous DNA laboratory on Miracle Isle off the coast of Maine. First, Beretta enlists Lara Brooks, a DNA specialist with a prosthetic leg who’s also the sister of a Jesuit priest, to go undercover and hire on at Miracle Isle. Then, since Miracle Isle is installing a supercomputer, he ropes in Allison’s father to get technical training and then masquerade as a computer expert. Can John Reese break into hidden files about the DNA? Also sneaking onto Miracle Isle is Allison’s former Japanese coworker Kenji Hamada, son of a top yakuza godfather. Kenji proudly tells his father that the skin contains a new gene that resists cellular senescence and that he needs his help in recovering it. Even more far-out: Bobby Jordan realizes that the relic is nothing less than a finger from the right hand of Christ—and that the Second Coming is promised when his Maine lab breaks down two new genes in the finger and fertilizes virginal Mary Joplin with them. . . . Strong start, and then a good idea dissolves in thuggery and gunfire.
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-312-86314-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1998
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
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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