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
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
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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