Hunters get hunted by a vengeful lunatic in this all-stops- out yarn of the world's worst hunting trip. James Metcalfe's thousand-square-mile spread on the border of Alberta and British Columbia is the best-stocked site for trophy deer hunting on the face of the earth. Now that Metcalfe's dead, his estate's been opened to hunting parties. The first party (each member has paid a fee of $7,000 for a week's hunt) includes three childhood buddies from Pennsylvania; a Nashville gun-store owner who hunts with bow and arrow; a Texas millionaire and his latest trophy wife; a knee-jerk liberal magazine writer planning an anti-hunting exposÇ; and Diana Jackman (a.k.a. Little Crow), a partNative American software writer who's going back to the woods in a desperate attempt to silence the demons from her troubled past. Diana's had no peace since her long-estranged father died; his death revealed his existence to her shocked husband for the first time. Now her decision to splurge on the Metcalfe junket has put her marriage on the rocks. But the real danger lies ahead, with an implacable spirit who seems bent on destroying the inaugural party by stalking and murdering them. Does James Metcalfe walk again (if he ever really died), or is the killer his nasty son Ronny? Is the motive a simple hatred of hunting, or does the killer have something personal against this particular party? And how can Diana defeat an adversary who seems to have the finely-honed senses and killer instincts of a wolf? Deliverance meets And Then There Were None, with a cast out of Gilligan's Island. Sullivan (Hard News, 1995, etc.) handles the hunter-hunted scenario with a slickness seasoned with mingled aromas of peyote, animal musk, and testosterone. Shorn of the heavy-going mystical ruminations that are bound to be cut, the inevitable movie should be a first-rate actioner. (First printing of 300,000; $250,000 ad/promo)
Pub Date: June 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-380-97428-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1997
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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