An unintriguing post-felony intrigue with a hero who gets away from it all (dead wife and child, pursuit by Latin American drug lords, burial in federal witness protection program) by hitting the slopes big time. Jack Farrell's an adrenaline addict who—we learn in flashback—responded to the crib death of his baby daughter by whisking his grieving wife, Lena, a nurse wrestling with demons he was only dimly aware of, away from Chicago to California. His boring, lucrative new job there as head of tiny San Diego First Fidelity's foreign investment department offered one chance for excitement: sending the department's capital base skyrocketing by accepting the dubious transactions of Mexican importer-exporter Gabriel Cortez. Jack gradually realized he was getting taken for a ride by a Colombian drug cartel, but he couldn't help himself: ``Farrell was now fully into the world of money-laundering, hooked on the rush, a junkie for danger.'' Now, back in a present sans Lena, his parents, his bank job, and his old identity, he takes a novel approach to going underground, agreeing to appear in megalomaniac film director Inez Didier's documentary on extreme skiing—a devil's compact that'll take him on some hair-raising downhills from Utah to Tahoe to the Tetons, with vampirish Inez constantly devising new challenges (collision-course skiing, skiing blindfolded, skiing on thawed snow) for Jack and his fellow recruits, one-eyed Matthew Page and Rastaman Jerry Milburn (a.k.a The Wave). The endless ski sequences push so hard for excitement that they become narcotizing. Like Jack, Lena, and Gabriel, Inez is battling nasty family memories (Do you think these guys could all be related?) that produce terrific footage, sex-and-power games, and broad portents of disaster. First-novelist Sullivan tries for Hemingway on powder but ends up remaking The Stunt Man with Leni Riefenstahl in the Peter O'Toole role, intercut with soporific flashbacks to a B-grade drug film.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8217-4710-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994
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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