Though the outcome is predictable, the storytelling is great. Thriller fans will enjoy this one.
A high-finance, high-stakes thriller pulsing with energy and tension.
The U.S. is in a financial crisis—China owns 90 percent of U.S. Treasury bills and suddenly won’t buy any more, meaning the U.S. will default on its debt within months. The country is “on the brink of financial disaster,” and President Brad Halley orders his treasury secretary to sell off “all government-owned assets. Nothing is sacred.” Meanwhile, Damon Traynor owns the private equity firm Carada Capital Partners and is one of the country’s “Most Powerful African Americans.” CCP is invited to bid to purchase SLIDA, the “strategic laser infrastructure for the defense of America” and an impenetrable shield against missile attack. “In terms of absolute profit,” Traynor says, “this was the sweetest deal I’d seen in my career.” But to proceed he needs to convince Frank Marcuri, a skeptical investor, who says no. Then Marcuri’s helicopter explodes over Boston Harbor, and his objection no longer matters. After CCP wins the bid for the low, low price of $25 billion, the fired head of technical development at SLIDA tells Traynor the supposedly perfect system doesn’t work. And Traynor is puzzled to learn CCP was the only bidder. While a government official warns Traynor to stop asking whether SLIDA works, people around him die at an alarming rate. Given that Traynor narrates, it’s no spoiler to say that he lives, but no one else is safe. It’s not hard to foresee who the villains are when the president declares “Sometimes leadership means doing the unthinkable for the greater good.” Bodenham (The Geneva Connection, 2014, etc.), a former private equity fund manager himself, clearly knows his terrain. He covers it so well that readers may not stop to question the plausibility of selling off such a defense system for an amount that wouldn’t come close to curing the national debt.
Though the outcome is predictable, the storytelling is great. Thriller fans will enjoy this one.Pub Date: Dec. 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-946502-13-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Down & Out Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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