Taylor (To Honor and Obey, 1992, etc.) chronicles one fascinating year (mid-1991 through mid-1992) behind the scenes with a deputy DA at the Los Angeles district attorney's office, ``the largest prosecuting agency in the world.'' Before there was O.J., there were the Menendez brothers, the Charles Keating savings and loan trial, the Rodney King trial, and the ensuing Reginald Denny case. With those headline grabbers in the background, Taylor tags along with Larry Longo, 52, a senior deputy district attorney, to learn what the job is like for ``a foot soldier in the front trenches'' and out of the spotlight. A ``gruff and scarred veteran of over twenty years of trial warfare,'' Longo ``had not given up an acquittal in eighteen years.'' His cases, while important and sensitive locally, do not get CNN coverage: the prosecution of a respected LA attorney for bilking a client; a case involving a Crips gang member accused of torturing one of his street pushers and feeding him to his pit bulls; the kidnapping and rape of a woman whose car had broken down. Longo's trickiest case found him outmaneuvered by a slick, politically powerful defense attorney named Mike Yamaki, whose client, a prominent leader in the Japanese-American community, was charged with shooting his best friend to death when he found him in the arms of his wife. Among other complexities, the case involved the controversial drug Halcion. The man was convicted, but Yamaki made a successful motion for a new trial by charging that Longo had committed prosecutorial misconduct by making a comment to the jury about the defendant's use of the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying. With glimpses of Judge Lance Ito and Marcia Clark and looks back at Vincent Bugliosi and others well known in the LA legal arena, Taylor does a masterful, straightfoward job of showing the day-to-day workings—and failings—of the judicial system. (photos, not seen)
Pub Date: March 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-688-11731-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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