Next book

CRITICAL JUDGMENT

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

Categories:
Next book

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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

Categories:
Next book

MAGIC HOUR

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

Categories:
Close Quickview