A mediocre whodunit in the midst of an amiable and often witty debut.
A hip debut offers a cheeky tale of intrigue, Manhattan-style.
Recent college grad Alex Orlando agrees to housesit in New York for her uncle Carmi while he makes his yearly pilgrimage to Puerto Rico to visit his “friend” Julio. Don’t go to the East Village or take the subway, Uncle Carmi warns, and especially don’t talk to the pushy foreigner next door. Naturally, Alex manages to break all three rules on her first day. Carmi’s right about one thing: Swedish architect Christian is pushy. With barely time to blink, he and Alex are having dinner, going to the gym, and finally rolling around on the floor of Uncle Carmi’s hallway. But Christian isn’t the only friend Alex finds in Manhattan. She reconnects with her old buddy Kyle, still experiencing fits of existential angst while nursing a drug habit. At her job in the hosiery department at Barney’s, she befriends the fanciful Malcolm, an up-and-coming playwright. And handsome Jan, a Belgian jeweler she had a fling with while traveling through Europe, turns up in town on business. Alex is enjoying her New York frolic until she discovers Christian’s dead body, with his curly blond head bashed in. In the ensuing mystery, disguised as a stylish study of young urban life (or is it the other way around?), red herrings and suspicious coincidences abound. Christian was Kyle’s drug dealer. Algerian terrorists threaten Alex in regard to Malcolm’s latest play, a manuscript of which was found in Christian’s apartment with Kyle’s handwriting on it. All of it proves to our heroine that she should have heeded Uncle Carmi’s advice and stayed out of the East Village. Unfortunately, the suspense the story successfully builds anticlimaxes in a conclusion far more mundane than the clues indicate.
A mediocre whodunit in the midst of an amiable and often witty debut.Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7434-1264-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: MTV Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
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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