Superb print version of a video game shoot-’em-up.
Third installment in the way, way over-the-top action adventures of US Marine Shane “Scarecrow” Schofield, and the best yet from this Australian author (Contest, 2003, etc.).
Called Scarecrow because of his disfigured eyes, Schofield and a crack crew of Delta Force soldiers rush to a Siberian sub repair base that’s been overrun by Islamic terrorists who have seized a cache of nuclear missiles. But instead of terrorists, Schofield finds a trap set by competing teams of international bounty hunters who’ve already killed two Delta Force soldiers on an $18.6 million-per-head kill list that also has Schofield’s name on it. The list of 15 super-soldiers, spies, scientists and one terrorist was complied by Majestic 12, a secret council of supremely rich multinational military industrial complex tycoons who not only buy and sell governments but have been responsible for every late-20th-century conspiracy from the assassination of JFK to Clinton’s impeachment trial—except for 9/11. Thus begins a serious of breathless, thoroughly contrived, but immensely entertaining action scenes in which Schofield, fellow soldiers Libby Gant, Book II, and Mother join with bounty hunter Aloysius Knight (being paid by an anonymous client to protect Schofield) and Knight’s trusty pilot Rufus as they take on killer sharks, fancy sports cars, helicopters, jet aircraft, a supertanker, an entire aircraft carrier, X-15 rocket planes, and the combined air forces of five African nations to stop a plot to pit rival countries against each other and plunge the world into anarchy. The action is so accomplished that we don’t care about cheesy Star Wars dialogue, as when Jay Killian, the Ralph Lauren–wearing head of a multinational arms-manufacturing company, mercilessly guillotines one of Schofield’s buddies and Schofield vows to “kill them all.” An endless stream of interchangeable bad guys wind up “deader than disco,” and everyone agrees when the US President intones of Schofield that “the fate of the free world could be resting on that man’s shoulders.”
Superb print version of a video game shoot-’em-up.Pub Date: March 24, 2004
ISBN: 0-312-28958-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2004
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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