Now there's a snappy title for Sanders' newest crime potboiler. Trouble is, heroine undercover cop Rita Sullivan doesn't sting anyone here—except maybe readers who put up with her and her creator's belly-flop into the Florida caper genre. Transferred to Fort Lauderdale from Tallahassee, Rita joins an independent surpra-agency of investigators—a federal attorney, a Treasury cop, etc., helmed by SEC investigator Tony Harker—to take down master swindler David Rathbone and his gang. Rathbone's an obsessed chisler, as eager to make sucker bets with his pals or rip off a florist for a free mum as he is to graze on Florida's lush crop of moochers, rich marks that he cons with phony investment schemes. But he's also a handsome and charming golden boy, so Rita's happy to hop into bed with him the night she picks him up, posing as a small-time moll; and soon she finds herself not only moving in but falling in love as he showers her with gifts and affection. That sits poorly with boss cop Harker, who's now also tossing the hay with Rita—and who can still see the moral rot beneath Rathbone's veneer. Meanwhile, Rathbone launches two major scams—one involving funny money printed on self-destructing paper, the other a futures exchange with drugs as the commodity bought and sold—that allow Sanders to strut some entertaining con scenarios. But Sanders stalls any narrative drive by scattering most of the rest of his plot among Rathbone's henchmen and the cops pursuing them. Rita regains center stage, however, when Harker at last orders Rathbone picked up: Will she keep her head and help cuff him? Or will she heed her heart and flee with him to Guatemala? Like a soda gone flat, this has all the right ingredients but none of the fizz of Leonard, Hiaasen, or Willeford. With Sanders' ever (and, by now, inexplicably) popular byline, though, it'll probably sleepwalk into best-sellerdom.
Pub Date: May 15, 1990
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1990
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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