A Third World coalition possessing cheap nukes and the will to use them threatens Uncle Sam in this rousing and well-paced, if predictable, undersea yarn. In the near future, the world is once again at war, with the US and the United Islamic Front (or UIF) duking it out across the eastern half of the globe. Complicating the situation are the Japanese, who make and sell the ingenious weapons and have no compunctions about exploiting the war as both marketplace and testing ground. Both sides have big plans to bring the boys back home by Christmas (or Ramadan). The US is plotting a strike on UIF headquarters, hoping to kill its leader, Gen. Mohammed al-Sihoud. The UIF has Scorpion: a sub-launched cruise missile outfitted with a low-tech but lethal mix of nuclear waste and glue that, when burst over Washington, will cover the Beltway in radioactive gunk guaranteed not to come out in the wash for the next 20,000 years. Narrowly escaping the US attack on his compound, Sihoud roars off to a rendezvous with his submarine, the Hegira, which is steaming toward America with the Scorpion aboard. Before long, the US sniffs out Sihoud, dispatches some vessels in pursuit, and the chase is on. After the Hegira ices one Yankee sub and cripples another, the US sends in its heavy hitter: Captain Michael ``Patch'' Pacino, serving his second literary tour of duty aboard the USS Seawolf (after Attack of the Seawolf, 1993). Eventually, the Seawolf destroys the Hegira but is stranded at the bottom of the Atlantic, setting up a powerfully claustrophobic rescue sequence. DiMercurio depicts his villains with creativity and restraint, but the plot has few twists, and its outcome is seldom in doubt. Still, fans of Tom Clancy and his ilk could do a lot worse.
Pub Date: Aug. 30, 1994
ISBN: 1-55611-392-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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