Marching through Georgia on what should have been a shoo-in reelection campaign, Republican Senator Bob Grant is forcibly reminded that big-time politics can be bloody murder in this tedious and far-fetched follow-up to Embrace the Serpent (1992). The venal, vaultingly ambitious (and unnamed) Democrat who gained the White House under false pretenses frets about taking on the right-minded Grant in a fair fight for the US presidency two years hence. To ensure he won't have to face the popular African- American on the hustings any time soon, POTUS (President of the US) puts his villainous Attorney General on the case. In relatively short order, the Colin Powell-like candidate finds himself framed for the murder of a reporter (supposedly digging into his suspect past) and accused of other improprieties, including drug abuse and adultery with a staffer who subsequently committed suicide. Thanks to help from family, friends, and an unlikely southern sheriff, the loving father of four is able to fight the ugly charges instigated by an evil administration that has centralized federal intelligence as well as law-enforcement organizations (CIA, DEA, FBI, etc.) in a single sinister agency (the NIIA). Undaunted by the police powers of the presidency, the hostility of a famously liberal press, and treachery within his own camp, the beleaguered candidate finally obtains the proof he needs to clear himself with voters just days before the election. With NIIA thugs in hot pursuit, Grant makes it from Washington to the Atlanta studio of CNN, astonishing the nation with his exculpatory evidence and a shocking demand that the rat-bastard chief executive be impeached. Over-the-top plotting, leaden dialogue, and a surfeit of partisan asides, courtesy of a former Second Lady and her sister. ($70,000 ad/promo; radio satellite tour; author tour)
Pub Date: May 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-310-20231-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Zondervan
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1996
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
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