Publishing’s archly amusing answer to Get Shorty—except that since it’s books rather than movies, instead of crazy things...
Grimes forsakes Supt. Richard Jury’s British haunts (The Grave Maurice, 2002, etc.) for a criminal farce played out in the cutthroat world of New York publishers.
When you’re a wealthy, successful author, with two million copies of your last book sold, who lives modestly in the East Village and watches publishers lining up like trained seals to compete for your next manuscript, you have pretty much whatever you want, and what Paul Giverney wants is Tom Kidd as his editor. More specifically, he wants Mackenzie-Haack, the house Kidd works for, to break its contract with Ned Isaly, a gifted but deeply noncommercial author Kidd works with so that Kidd won’t be encumbered by a more talented writer than Paul. Clive Esterhaus, the senior editor at Mackenzie and Haack that Paul offers this deal to, recoils from the prospect of losing not only Ned Isaly but other Kidd authors who’d surely follow their indignant editor out the door, and so does his equally venal publisher, Bobby Mackenzie. But there is a solution to this mass exodus: hire a hit man to kill Ned, freeing up Kidd without collateral damage. So Clive puts in a call to Danny Zito, a Mackenzie-Haack author now in the Witness Protection Program, who delivers not one but two button men, Candy and Karl, who’ll be only too happy to take care of Mackenzie-Haack’s problem once they’ve gotten to know their target—by trailing him, reading his books, and hanging around the literary set. By the time Clive realizes this genie is never going back into the bottle, the stage is set for a surrealistic showdown on the streets of Pittsburgh, whither everyone in the cast has adjourned to stalk everyone else.
Publishing’s archly amusing answer to Get Shorty—except that since it’s books rather than movies, instead of crazy things happening very fast, crazy things get talked about at length and not all that much happens in the end.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2003
ISBN: 0-670-03259-X
Page Count: 380
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2003
In a hugger-mugger attempt to follow up his bestselling Absolute Power (1996), Baldacci pits a young widow against corporate villains who want her silenced at all costs. When her husband Jason apparently dies in the crash of a jetliner bound from Washington to L.A., Sidney Archer's near- perfect world implodes. A high-powered attorney working on the latest merger planned by Triton Global (a high-tech multinational that employed Jason on hush-hush computer projects), she can't accept that the beloved father of her precocious little daughter Amy is dead. Sidney's subliminal faith is not misplaced. Jason, who had shopped his company's darkest secrets in an effort to make a quick financial killing, switched planes before takeoff and is alive but not well in Seattle. On the day of his funeral, Sidney hears from him via phone. She keeps her own counsel, but Lee Sawyer (an FBI agent assigned to the case) is suspicious because available evidence suggests that Jason not only sabotaged the downed aircraft but also engineered a megabuck embezzlement. Presciently, however, the missing man had encrypted his proof of Triton's misdeeds on a duplicate disk that he mailed to himself before disappearing. Eager to get a printout that could clear Jason, Sidney sets out on a roundabout odyssey that takes her from suburban Virgina to Manhattan and points north. Although Triton's corrupt CEO and his murderous, stop-at-nothing minions are on her trail, clever Sidney foils them at almost every turn. With help from a besotted Sawyer, the pistol-packin' mama also begins unraveling the mystery of her mate's vanishing act. In a violent climactic confrontation on the stormy coast of Maine, the two learn the truth about an immense conspiracy in which Jason's fate is but a sideshow. A talky, tedious tale of an unlikely heroine's desperate life on the run, longer on confusion than suspense or narrative coherence. (Main selection of the Literary Guild; $500,000 ad/promo; author tour)
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 1997
ISBN: 0-446-52095-0
Page Count: 464
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1996
Victor Van Allen, a quiet- seemingly complacent husband to the pretty, pleasure-loving Melinda, frightens off her lovers successfully- until Charley De Lisle forces him to fulfill his threat- of murder. Mclinda accuses Vic hysterically- but convinces no one, and when she hires a private investigator, Vic fires him. A new liaison is again terminated suddenly-the body is not discovered by the police-and it is finally Melinda who secures the proof of what she had long suspected.... Again the fine detail of dialogue and action pinpoints a portrayal of an imperturbable killer- but without the flair of some of the earlier performances.
Pub Date: Oct. 2, 1957
ISBN: 0393324559
Page Count: 276
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1957
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