Second novel by the author of Washington Wives (1987), as well as MO: A Woman's View of Watergate (1975), who is the wife of Watergate whistle-blower John Dean. With her flat, factual style, Dean delivers a likable, sexy, complex story about Capitol intrigues, this time involving murder. Multimillionaire Congresswoman Laura Christen, a widow of 46 and in her seventh term in the House, decides to take a shot at becoming Speaker of the House, the first woman ever to do so. Speakers are elected by House members, and right at the start Laura, an Independent, has a strong lock on the Republican vote and seemingly has locked up the votes of all the women Democrats. It's close, though, and incumbent Speaker Lew Ronkowski chooses to fight dirty, making sure that terrible (but unfounded) stories about Laura appear in the supermarket tabloids. At the press conference where Laura announces herself, to great applause from the press, she is approached by Jeremy Marsten, a sleazeball reporter with a letter that tells of a bastard hidden in Laura's past. But while leaving the conference, Jeremy is murdered with a bizarre superpoison injected into his neck. Dr. Penelope Krim, a monstrous syndicated gossip columnist, lifts the letter from Jeremy's body and begins her own spiteful crusade against Laura. Penelope hires Jake Alban, a down-at-heels Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter (still mourning the death of his wife by terrorists) to dig up all the dirt he can find in Laura's past. But Jake has had a rich attachment to Laura since interviewing her ten years earlier and now falls for her. Meanwhile, Laura's 24-year-old daughter, Catherine ``Catsy'' Christen Braden, Laura's press secretary and the most available lady in the media corps, defends her mother by any means, including sex with the enemy. Even if Laura wins, will this mother and daughter ever come clean with each other? No-holds-barred commercial novel bent on murdering your sleep.
Pub Date: Feb. 6, 1992
ISBN: 0-399-13660-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1991
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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