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
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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