A tale with an unforgettable villain that’s more amusing than scary.
In Laemmle’s (co-author: Asylum of Insanity, 2016, etc.) horror tale, an evil, sentient ventriloquist doll terrorizes citizens in a secluded mountain town.
Hank Cooper is an environmental scientist in Atomic City, New Mexico, but has ambitions to be a celebrity ventriloquist. Ideally, he thinks, his entire family would become famous for their ventriloquism skills. His wife, Nancy, and their twin 14-year-old children, Jake and Jessie, dismiss his plans, which Hank, an alcoholic, proclaims while drunk. But one day, he stops by a local store called the Hobby Dungeon to buy a ventriloquist doll. As it happens, Woody the Wooden Dummy mysteriously arrived at the shop’s door that very morning. Hank takes Woody home, where it suddenly starts talking to him—all on its own. Woody is crass and insulting—and he soon forms a telepathic link with Hank that allows him to control the man’s body. Woody, as a puppeteer, causes trouble around town, but some people, including Nancy, believe that a drunken Hank has simply gone wild. Then the dummy targets Jake, as well. The Coopers eventually learn Woody’s origin and realize that the doll is possessed by something diabolical and frighteningly methodical. They also suspect that Woody is cooking up an even more sinister scheme. Although Woody is indeed chilling at times, Laemmle’s novel is more of a black comedy than a serious horror tale. The Coopers’ conversations are full of engaging quips and references to pop culture, and Woody’s initial “mind-meld” with Hank is macabre and droll, by turns. The jokes are abundant and generally funny, as when Woody assures Hank that he’s not a problem drinker: “Alcoholics are people who need a drink, and clearly you’ve had plenty.” The evil dummy’s backstory is thorough and coherent, but the explanation is unnecessarily long and somewhat disrupts the pace. Fortunately, the final act regains momentum as Hank and family aim to thwart Woody’s wicked plans. (Although this novel reads as a stand-alone, it launches a prospective series of horror stories set in Atomic City.)
A tale with an unforgettable villain that’s more amusing than scary.Pub Date: May 20, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-09-718494-1
Page Count: 242
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: July 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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