American pilots languish in a secret Vietnamese prison as President Nixon and Henry Kissinger negotiate the end of US involvement in the war—in the fifth and concluding volume of Berent's highly detailed Air Force saga (Eagle Station, 1992, etc.). Vietnamization, the process that turned America's role in the war over to the natives, is nearly complete. Negotiations with the Viet Cong and their North Vietnamese masters are proceeding, however slowly. American ground troops are being shipped back to the States by the thousands, but the air war continues, and North Vietnam continues to hold prisoners. And there is a disturbing new pattern in the segregation of American flyers in the North Vietnamese prison camps. Electronic Warfare Officers, the men who sit behind the pilots and run the radars and weapons systems, are disappearing from the downtown Hanoi jail known as the ``Hanoi Hilton.'' The word from the prisoners' underground message system is that the Soviets, advisors to the North Vietnam Army, plan to ship the flyers back to the motherland, where their brains will be picked clean of American strategy and tactics and from whence they will not return. After much political agonizing, Special Forces Col. Wolf Lochert, who's been something of a one-man army through the series, gets the assignment to drop into Hanoi, learn the whereabouts of the secret camp, take incriminating pictures, and get the evidence of Soviet involvement back to the President, who will use it in negotiations. Meanwhile, saga star Court Bannister works up new bombing tactics for the huge B52s that will be used to encourage North Vietnam to negotiate more seriously, and saga costar Toby Parker at last gets to strap on the fighters he was born to fly. Militarily true to life in its long stretches of unfortunately snoozy detail—stretches punctuated by terrifying action and heroism. Not the place to start this worthy series.
Pub Date: Oct. 14, 1993
ISBN: 0-399-13814-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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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