Swift enough and good-natured, though it never quite lifts off.
A slacker sloughs his life as a pathology tech and finds fulfillment as an apprentice to a Mexican crimelord in LA.
Screenwriter Smith is the latest entrant in the How Hard Can It Be To Knock Off Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen In One Slim Crime Novel? contest. The obligatory grotesquery here is the detached arm of Amado, a career criminal thinking about a career change. He’s been working with soulful and long-time overlord Esteban Sola, but his last outing, when he tangled with an overhead garage door while offing a traitorous underling, left a pornographically adorned arm on the floor of the crime scene. That arm is in the custody of Bob, low-energy forensic pathology lab tech, who’s become obsessed with the beauty of the orgasmic gal etched into it. Before Bob can get the analyzed limb to the cops, he’s snatched by Esteban’s strike force, who decide they need to swap the criminal arm for a clean one before it goes back to the cops. Selected for brachial detachment is a dweeby cookbook author who’s been receiving lessons in enhanced masturbation from Bob’s ex-girlfriend Maura, a sex therapist who is about to discover her own passion for pistols when she is grilled and then, well, drilled by detective Don, a cop whose career goal is the elimination of Esteban from the LA crime scene. Bob would be a goner if it were up to Martin, Esteban’s Ivy League lieutenant, a sourpuss whose criminal skills have solidified Esteban’s finances but have failed to win Esteban’s heart. Oddly enough it’s Bob who win’s the old boss’s affections in various demonstrations of pluck and ardor. The ardor really shows up when Amado makes it possible for Bob to meet beautiful Felicia, the real-life girl tattooed on that arm in the cooler.
Swift enough and good-natured, though it never quite lifts off.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-312-30364-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2002
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
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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