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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
