In a sequel to A Time of War (1990), former LBJ emissary Bradley Marshall takes on a diplomatic chore for Nixon: trying to persuade the South Vietnamese to sign a peace treaty that sells them out. Marshall's the right choice for this miserable job because the South Vietnamese trust him. He has hardly landed in Saigon, however, when he learns of a highly placed North Vietnamese defector who has a copy of General Giap's plan to invade the South immediately after the accord is signed. Such a plan will surely scuttle the treaty and also jeopardize the one remaining American interest: release of the POWs. In moral agony, Marshall proceeds to make contact with the defector—as does his old nemesis, CIA operative Wilson Lord. All bets are off, though, when the defector is killed; in the action, a young Marine officer, Luke Bishop, is seriously wounded. In Marshall's haste to get Bishop to a hospital, his car runs down a toddler, the only daughter of an old Chinese, Chien Lin Huong, who has been an American ally. Next scene: six years later, and Jimmy Carter sends Marshall on another impossible mission, this time to Paris to make peace with the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini, since Carter knows the Shah is about to fall. Marshall brings along Ron Mean, his bodyguard from A Time of War, as well as the recovered Bishop—and the two are soon fending off the obsessed Huong, who lost his fortune, his wife, and his mother to the Communists, and who now blames Marshall. Enter Wilson Lord once again, combatting the fuzzy liberal thinking of Carter and his emissary, enlisting Huong in a plot to assassinate Marshall and thereby block rapprochement with the Ayatollah. Peterson's presidents never come alive, but his politics are shrewd and he spins a fine intrigue: Herman Wouk, say, by way of William F. Buckley.
Pub Date: March 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-671-72695-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1996
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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