Three top-of-the-line international call girls and their Parisian madame befuddle an American journalist who can't figure out whether he has been commissioned to tell all or nothing about their very scandalous, very entertaining lives. Free of the restraints of co-authoring (with Sandy Till Robinson, Friends in High Places, 1979) and ghostwriting, author Goldberg cuts loose and may never have to go back to the old grind. The story drips with as many furs and gems as a Collins or Sheldon, but everyone seems to be having much more fun and there is no poky, unbelievable high finance or business mumbo-jumbo in this entertaining diversion about sex, loyalty, love, money, romance, and writing. Reporter Peter Shea's first contact with one of procuress-to-the-powerful Madame Cleo's splendidly skilled employees at a posh orgiastic do outside Paris was smashing and never-to-be-forgotten, but the home office heard about it and Peter got the axe. Several years later, after painfully rebuilding his career with the help of his clever, zaftig, and shamelessly lovelorn editor, Peter is offered the chance to ghost the memoirs of Madame Cleo, who is now in the clutches of the French IRS and badly in need of big money. Word of Madame's decision to Tell All has already resulted in an attempt on her life, and, given the wealth and power of her clientele, there's no end of suspects. It's a bit frightening, but a million-dollar advance is enough to take care of any reservations Peter might have, and he settles into one of Madame's hotels to begin taping her richly fascinating memories. But the memories are all about her star American pupils and never about herself. Fascinating and amusing as the girls may be, Peter was hired to write about Madame, and he persists until, with help from the girls themselves, Cleo's tragically romantic story comes to light. Good-natured, lightly amoral entertainment.
Pub Date: April 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-69524-X
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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