A satisfying Nazi/Cold War potboiler by the author of The Original Sin (1992) that turns on the heat at the start and doesn't let up until the kettle shrieks 592 pages later. World War II has just ended. A beautiful peasant girl in Italy dies giving birth to an illegitimate daughter, Catarina, while a man named Joseph tries to convince the Russians in charge of a Displaced Persons camp in Latvia that he is an American and should be sent home. Meanwhile, David, a seductive but penniless Englishman home from the war, reels in Evelyn, a woman with the money and connections he's been waiting for. Then we're back to the future in 1992. A glamorous Vail resort director named Kate (the grown-up Catarina, as it turns out) is engrossed in researching an American POW who disappeared into the Soviet gulag after the war- -while a shadowy figure sets a sadistic killer on Kate's trail. The killer catches up to her, ransacking her house and leaving her in a coma. Kate's daughter Anna, an investigative reporter, arrives to coax her mother back to consciousness, and stays to find out who her mother was looking for and who tried to have her killed. It all leads back to Joseph and David, as the story continues to unfold in both the past (with engrossing descriptions of wartime and postwar hardship and romance) and the present (with lots of formulaic romance and heavy-handed villainy). Anna switches with dizzying speed from intrigue to interior decorating as she puzzles out her mother's mystery with the help of Philip Westward, a suave millionaire she doesn't quite trust but falls madly in love with. It's all a bit much at times, as Anna remarks to her still- unconscious mother: ``Life's a bitch. You in here, Evelyn dying all alone in England. And I'm in love with the most wonderful man I've ever known. And I'm so happy, so sad, so confused.'' But she rallies and, with Philip's help, manages to survive an over-the-top encounter with an aging Nazi and solve her mother's mystery—and Philip's—both of which have to do with false identities and missing fathers. Despite the usual genre cliches and an occasional jarring note of sexism, this is a well-paced and engaging read.
Pub Date: March 15, 1994
ISBN: 0-553-08988-9
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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