In the little kingdom of Montandino, California, Chief of Police Diego (Digger) Martinez is the Eagle, and Dr. Harold Baranoff is the king. Brought in to revitalize the Graysmith Lab, Hal Baranoff has moved into primate experimentation with a single-mindedness that’s attracted the well-publicized opposition of animal-rights activist Carla Strombaugh and the terrorists calling themselves the Mercy Bandits. He’s also replaced the cancer-stricken head janitor with a Latino who’ll work for minimum wage, dismissed a graduate student who was getting too friendly with another student Hal was sleeping with, revived an old quarrel with his twin brother Vance—who’s still in love with Hal’s wife Susie—and alienated his own twin children, Rachel and Reuben, who are willing to break into his lab to free a pair of squirrel monkeys. So it’s not so surprising that he’d be found dead one Easter, soon after receiving an anonymous threat: “QUIT MONKS OR DIE!” What’s surprising is the way he’s found: huddled in the bottom of a pit used to test the chemical reactions of macaque monkeys to despair. Pulitzer poet Kumin (Women, Animals, and Vegetables: Essays and Stories, 1994, etc.) uses a clipped, nervously understated style that cuts back and forth between Digger’s investigation and events leading up to Hal’s death to create a viselike pressure on his final hours, showing how they took shape from the actions of every human primate he’d used. Kumin’s stylish riddles come packaged with just enough clues to deepen their mystery till the quiet fadeout.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-885266-77-4
Page Count: 180
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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