Van Wormer (Any Given Moment, 1995, etc.), who dedicates her fifth novel to ``the rest of the jury,'' not only served on a New York City murder trial but managed to get a good mystery-romance out of it. Did the accused—James Bennett Layton Jr., the ``poor little rich boy''—hire a hit man to murder model Sissy Cook, who spurned his advances and humiliated him in public? Did he leave her, drive his Jaguar to New Jersey, pick up the shooter, and take him back to Manhattan to blow Sissy's face off? Or did he, as he claims, black out on drugs and alcohol while someone else stole his car? Such must be decided by novelist Cornelia ``Libby'' Winslow and her fellow jurors—among them, Slicked-Back Ronnie, Wall Streeter William, Alex the Marlboro Man, Sweet Bridget, Elena from Brazil, Basha from Russia, and Eleanor from Sutton Place—while they dodge the media and simultaneously sort out the rest of their lives. Libby's career is going nowhere, she's broke, and she's just ended a demoralizing three-year relationship with lover Hal. It's not surprising, then, that she cheerfully welcomes the advances of Alex, a tall and handsome fellow juror, until he becomes proprietary and finally violent. But William, not nearly so tall or handsome, surprisingly begins to attract Libby a lot. Poor Will has been trying to unload his roommate Betsy, who came for sex a year earlier and never left. And another juror, Melissa, an advertising tyro in Donna Karan suits, has three years' sobriety in AA and is beginning to investigate her lesbianism. By the close, justice and romance will be served equally, with both a verdict and a bride. And Van Wormer, whose jury experience was obviously a memorable one, shows how Americans in an airless, overheated jury room can form powerful and rather uplifting bonds. A legal three-ring circus with brains and wit, populated with colorful New Yorkers of every stripe and class.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-517-70065-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
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