Numerous exotic locales can’t bring heat to this long-simmering thriller.
A man finds himself on the wrong side of an unhinged thief in this thriller by the author of Superheat (2012).
In 1970, Randy Capra is an unemployed chemical engineer from Ohio. With the Vietnam War slowing down, he’s been laid off by Numex Chemicals. He and his girlfriend, Sally Sohlar, have moved to San Francisco to start their lives over. At a New Year's Eve party, Randy encounters a friend from Kent State University named “Cousin” Stoner. Through Stoner, Randy meets Uncle Buzz and Casimir “Captain Courageous” Kapowski, who invite him to make “a couple of extra bucks.” The job, about which Randy knows little, is to steal a new Porsche 911 from a dealership. The theft goes smoothly, but when Captain Courageous is later arrested, he assumes Randy ratted him out to the police. Cap has zero tolerance for snitches and plans to eliminate Randy as soon as he makes bail. Meanwhile, Sally and Randy's relationship has deteriorated because only she makes honest, consistent money. Luckily, Randy meets Monique Minet on Pacifica Beach. Her marriage is falling apart, and she takes to Randy immediately. When Randy decides to hop the Capetown Queen passenger ship to Australia, Monique, who has become romantically obsessed with him—and the vengeful Captain Courageous—are in pursuit. Wood’s latest thriller begins strongly as a transporting glimpse into President Richard Nixon's reign: “Economics had trumped peace and love.” California’s beauty steps onstage, as when “the distant Caliente Mountains looked like pink teeth biting into a deep blue sky.” Once Wood’s overseas chase starts, however, drab travel logistics keep the narrative from truly revving up (“She began punching numbers into a mechanical calculator, which clacked each time she pulled the handle”). The aptly named Randy likewise becomes distracting, with women constantly throwing themselves at him. Cap’s criminal origins as a bullied child are well wrought, and San Francisco street races feel like cuts from the action film Bullitt (1968), but Wood’s protagonist isn’t interesting enough to sustain interest for as long as the plot requires.
Numerous exotic locales can’t bring heat to this long-simmering thriller.Pub Date: May 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-387-27346-1
Page Count: 278
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2020
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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