Another is that the present volume, as so many earlier entries in this series were rumored to have been, is actually the...
Veteran Washington insider Truman (1924-2008) rises from the grave—or does she?—for another round of murder, espionage and sightseeing.
Is it by the former First Daughter or not? The long opening movement—in which Savannah private eye Bob Brixton is hired by Eunice Watkins, not to find out who killed her daughter Louise shortly after the young woman’s release from prison, but who committed the murder to which Louise confessed four years ago—doesn’t sound like her. Nor does the failure, once the scene shifts to the circle of nonpareil D.C. hostess Mitzi Cardell and her best bud, First Lady Jeanine Montgomery Jamison, to invoke a single iconic Capital landmark, though Truman’s first two dozen titles (Murder at the Opera, 2006, etc.) used up all the best sites. On the other hand, the cloak-and dagger subplot involving CIA contract assassin Emile Silva sounds as wide-eyed, earnest and unsubtle as Truman. So does her bashing of President Fletcher Jamison and his right-wing cronies, all of whom turn out to be guilty of crimes even graver than rhetorical overkill (“this is a white Christian nation built upon the backs of European immigrants"). And law professor Mackensie Smith and his gallery-owner wife Annabel are as charming and anodyne as ever, even though they have practically nothing to do. One possible conclusion is that death not only hasn’t stilled Truman; it hasn’t even much changed her voice.
Another is that the present volume, as so many earlier entries in this series were rumored to have been, is actually the work of a surviving ghostwriter whose talents might shine forth more brightly if they weren’t tethered to Annabel, Mac and the Washington social register.Pub Date: July 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7653-2609-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Looks like Neal Carey, the peripatetic agent of that free- lance justice troop Friends of the Family, will never get back to New York to write his dissertation on Tobias Smollett. This time he's sprung from three years in a Chinese monastery (The Trail to Buddha's Mirror, 1992) only to be sent undercover as a ranch-hand in the Nevada plains to scout out the Sons of Seth, a white- supremacist flock that's his best hope for locating two-year-old Cody McCall, snatched from his Hollywood mother during a paternal weekend. Neal settles in deep, of course, and his ritual ordeals- -having to sell out the rancher who took him in, breaking off his romance with tough schoolmarm Karen Hawley, going up against rotten-apple Cal Strekker, getting ordered to kill his Friendly mentor Joe Graham—are as predictable as the trademark dose of mysticism as the bodies pile up, and as the certainty that when the dust settles, Neal won't be back at school. Winslow's Aryan crazies don't have the threatening solidity of Stephen Greenleaf's (Southern Cross, p. 1102 ), but Neal's latest adventure is full of entertaining derring-do.
Pub Date: Nov. 16, 1993
ISBN: 0-312-09934-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1993
O'Brien proves to be the Oliver Stone of literature, reiterating the same Vietnam stories endlessly without adding any insight. Politician John Wade has just lost an election, and he and his wife, Kathy, have retired to a lakeside cabin to plan their future when she suddenly disappears. O'Brien manages to stretch out this simple premise by sticking in chapters consisting of quotes from various sources (both actual and fictional) that relate to John and Kathy. An unnamed author — an irritating device that recalls the better-handled but still imperfect "Tim O'Brien" narrator of The Things They Carried (1990) — also includes lengthy footnotes about his own experiences in Vietnam. While the sections covering John in the third person are dry, these first-person footnotes are unbearable. O'Brien uses a coy tone (it's as though he's constantly whispering "Ooooh, spooky!"), but there is no suspense: The reader is acquainted with Kathy for only a few pages before her disappearance, so it's impossible to work up any interest in her fate. The same could be said of John, even though he is the focus of the book. Flashbacks and quotes reveal that John was present at the infamous Thuan Yen massacre (for those too thick-headed to understand the connection to My Lai, O'Brien includes numerous real-life references). The symbolism here is beyond cloying. As a child John liked to perform magic tricks, and he was subsequently nicknamed "Sorcerer" by his fellow soldiers — he could make things disappear, get it? John has been troubled for some time. He used to spy on Kathy when they were in college, and his father's habit of calling the chubby boy "Jiggling John" apparently wounded him. All of this is awkwardly uncovered through a pretentious structure that cannot disguise the fact that there is no story here. Sinks like a stone.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 061870986X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
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