Realistically portrayed medical procedures and more than you'd care to know about toxic poisoning—both pump up a relentlessly predictable emergency-room melodrama. In his seventh medical thriller, Massachusetts-based Palmer (Silent Treatment, 1995, etc.), a former ER physician, goes west to the excessively scenic, ironically named northern California mountain town of Patience, where Dr. Abby Dolan, lately of San Francisco, has just joined the Patience Regional Hospital emergency room team. Everyone seems to know everyone else too well in this small, former gold-rush mining town, now the headquarters of Colstar International, a giant manufacturing concern specializing in exotic batteries, many containing the metal cadmium. It doesn't take many pages before our spunky, dedicated, fearlessly competent heroine suspects that the inexplicable ailments dragging a parade of fuzzy-warm small-town types through her emergency room might have something to do with environmental contamination at Colstar, even if blood tests and other procedures reveal nothing unusual. Palmer tries to complicate his basic Enemy of the People plot by having Dr. Dolan's boyfriend, Josh Wyler, a Colstar company man, mutate into a gun-toting crazy, so that Dr. Dolan can seek solace in the strong arms of Dr. Lew Alvarez, an impeccably handsome emergency-room physician and leader of the Alliance, a paltry group of eco-activists who want to shut down Colstar. Between passionate kisses, Dr. Alvarez suggests to Dr. Dolan that cadmium, an element used in batteries, could be causing some of Patience's residents, including Dr. Dolan's erstwhile boyfriend, to go suddenly berserk. Dr. Dolan finds herself dodging rifle fire, pickup trucks, and, even worse, bureaucratic snafus. Warmed-over Robin Cook-esque hospital paranoia, though saved by an earnest appreciation of emergency room heroics.
Pub Date: July 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-553-10074-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1996
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
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
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