An energetic romantic-suspense tale that might have greatly benefited from a stronger edit.
A hearing-impaired woman must brave the tunnels of Paris’ catacombs in Lonergan’s debut thriller.
Twenty-five-year-old Canadian Madeleine Windsor, who owns a successful dressmaking company, first meets Irishman Jack Holt on a Paris trip with her parents. She’d earlier seen him in the street from her hotel balcony, fleeing from police officers. He tells Madeleine and her parents that he owns a vineyard and a coffee shop, among other things, but she assumes that he’s some kind of gangster. Still, Jack is smitten with Madeleine, and he becomes determined to woo her after he runs into her again, by chance, back in Canada. A romance sparks between them, and Jack explains that his Paris pursuers were actually assassins, likely working for a man who’s after a gold medallion that Jack discovered. The couple’s relationship gets more serious when they return to Paris and Madeleine nearly gets struck by a car—which may have been an attempted hit. Jack considers hiring a personal bodyguard to watch her, but then she vanishes while taking a tour of the local catacombs. Madeleine finds herself lost in the pitch-dark tunnels, but her hearing aid is inoperable, rendering her unable to see or hear. Lonergan devotes much of the novel to the couple’s romance, long before Madeleine reaches the titular setting. He deftly establishes their lighthearted relationship and shows how Jack earns Madeleine’s trust. There are witty moments along the way, as when Madeleine tells her parents that she’s dating Jack—after having convinced them that he’s an unsavory criminal. Madeleine is a smashingly good protagonist whose hearing impairment challenges but never incapacitates her. She’s also quite independent; at one point, when Jack tells her, in a text, to wear blue on a date, she responds that she’ll wear whatever she pleases. Although the eventual catacombs scenes are suspenseful, they’re over far too quickly. Also, the text contains myriad, distracting errors that mar the book, including sentence fragments and misspellings; run-on sentences, in particular, result in some unnecessary confusion.
An energetic romantic-suspense tale that might have greatly benefited from a stronger edit.Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-64151-770-6
Page Count: 264
Publisher: LitFire Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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