An artist is drawn back into his family's rather sordid business and into the orbit of an odious Trump-style real-estate developer in Chicago. Kilian's most recent imperiled WASP thriller was The Last Virginia Gentleman (1992). The Curlands of Chicago have pretty much hit the skids. Matthias Curland—one-time architect, crafty yachtsman, and hero of this well-mannered novel of midwestern manners and murder—has gone nowhere as an artist in Europe. His brother, Christian, paints and cossets Chicago society ladies and accepts gifts from them. Their father, who ran the family architectural firm into the ground, is slipping into dementia, and their unpleasant mother has just slipped off to the big jewelry department in the sky. Only the dog-rearing suburban sister has done at all well. Back in Illinois for mum's funeral, Matthias picks up with an old flame just before meeting and becoming intrigued with Diandra Poe, wife of Chicago's most flamboyant zillionaire. Peter Poe, a world-class rat with an exceptionally vicious secretary, appears to be giving Mrs. Poe the high sign to hop into bed with Matthias. What could the condoned cuckoldry have to do with hubby's plans to build the tallest building in the universe, his selection of Matthias as house architect, conversion of the lakefront airport, the Curland family museum, or the bullet holes in the stolen artwork found on the body of Matthias's old girlfriend on the derelict yacht that floated into the bailiwick of a Michigan police chief with roots in Chicago? Matthias and the cop sort it all out together. There are no cliffs from which to hang in the Midwest, but there is that lovely big lake, so there's a modestly tense yacht race. Most of the characters are repellent, but if Kilian ever slides over to mysteries, Chief Zany Rawlings would do nicely in a recurring role.
Pub Date: Oct. 11, 1993
ISBN: 0-312-09925-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1993
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
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