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THE MAGNIFICENT SIBERIAN

Bloodless stereotypes, a blurred focus, and implausible coincidences blight the promise of this preachy eco-thriller from the author of White Harvest (1994), etc. Here, homicidal reactionaries use an imposing Siberian tiger and her three cute cubs in a plot to overthrow post-Communist Russia's democratically elected government. Charbonneau sets the pot to boiling in the subarctic forests where coastal Russia shares a frontier with China and North Korea. Here in the taiga, American biologist Chris Harmon (a specialist in big cats who's engaged in a research project sanctioned by Moscow) shoots some incriminating film as he and a local game warden attempt to foil what appears to be a routine incursion by poachers into a restricted sector of the nature preserve they patrol. Once Harmon gets to Vladivostok, where his chums at the Global Wildlife Federation (GWF) office make an international incident of dramatic pictures of the tiger's wounding, the body count starts rising all over the port city. It develops that the callow young scientist's film has put some beastly riflemen as well as innocent felines in the frame. This discovery inconveniences a vaultingly ambitious, ultranationalist pol named Boris Provalev, who, as part of his plan to stage a media-abetted coup, has engineered logging contracts that could destroy habitat needed by the already endangered species. Accordingly, Provalev expands the brief of an ex-KGB assassin known as The Collector. Meanwhile, Lina Mashikova, a lissome GRU agent, latches onto Harmon, who believes she's a freelance journalist. When he and his fellow GWF travelers are not delivering extemporaneous sermonettes on humankind's environmental responsibilities, they lobby venal apparatchiks and world opinion in the cause of Siberian tigers. At the ho-hum close, however, it is Mashikova, her Red Army masters, and the militia that pull everyone's chestnuts from the fire. For all the exotic locales and creatures: really just another cat-and-mouse exercise.

Pub Date: April 20, 1995

ISBN: 1-55611-422-2

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Donald Fine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1995

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MAGIC HOUR

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

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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

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