A triumphant alchemy of fact and fiction.
The hellish bombing of a Kurdish city lights the fuse on a taut, foreboding espionage caper involving mobile nukes, a crazy cleric and vulnerable people in Mulkerin’s debut novel.
Declan Sullivan is the sort of intrepid, uber-competent adventurer who would probably go nuts if he wasn’t fighting to save the world in some small way. But the former Green Beret is barely keeping his head above water as he desperately tries to save his small band of comrades from the clutches of cruel enemies who shunt human beings—and potential weapons of mass destruction—around like chess pieces. Sullivan’s prior experiences in the Middle East collide with his present-day quest to liberate his friends from an ancient Turkish prison. Old colleagues are suspect, and he’s having a devil of a time thwarting the fiendishly clever Ayatollah Kashami and his elaborate machinations. In Declan’s world, the powerful have eyes everywhere, and appearances consistently deceive. Despite the expansiveness of the international locale, the harrowing odyssey feels specific and immediate, as does the finely rendered cast. The relentless pace never slows, and Sullivan and company’s frequent traumas amplify the tension. This sense of drama shows on every page, especially when Declan is struggling to rescue a friend: “He stretched until his shoulder was jammed into the crevice. At the fullest extent of his reach, he felt her skin with his fingertips.” Mulkerin’s extensive real-world experience in both medicine and the military provides him with a font of technical knowledge, but in this harrowing geopolitical potboiler, his writing chops take the lead.
A triumphant alchemy of fact and fiction.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-1481025829
Page Count: 390
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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