Far less kinky and more straightforwardly police-procedural than the bestselling First, Chief Ed ("Iron Balls") Delaney's new case—taken in retirement—is the knifemurder of that throwback titan of the artworld, Victor Maitland ("If he painted a tit, it was a tit"). Delaney and semi-recovered alcoholic sidekick Abner Boone (two retch-and-regret lapses) obnoxiously hound the standard Perry-Masonic coven of suspects: wife (frigid); mistress (drug-pushiug nympho of the society page); son (Oedipally violent); agent (heavyhandedly named Geltman); and the best friend who envied Maitland's much-proclaimed but unconvincingly novelized genius. (The descriptions of Maitland's super-realistic nudes suggest a Norman Rockwell gone groinal.) A plausible tax-fraud scheme involving falsely dated, cached canvases is uncovered, but the investigation is wrapped up by a jolly black cop's tracing of an almost-eye-witness—the undesirable Hispanic hooker who saw the culprit on the scene. So, as detection, this is ordinary-minus, but Sanders piles on the homey, sandwich sentiment (Delaney's second wife is sexy perfection) and the irresistibly vulgar-phoney NY palaver; all players—including the denizens of Sanders' ludicrously muraled art scene—come on movie-sized, invariably venal, and talking that blend of Bogart & Yiddish & Lenny Bruce spoken everywhere but in life (compare, for example, Uhnak's real-cop lingo). The end-product is unquestionably lively and as readably mindless as a padded Erie Stanley Gardner can be, but, if there are going to be five more of these time-wasters, one for every sin, a little more imagination and a lot less formula would be advisable.
Pub Date: Sept. 2, 1977
ISBN: 0246110384
Page Count: 412
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1977
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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