Proficiently develops characters, relationships, and storylines in the midst of nonstop action.
The fifth entry in Arceneaux’s (North Beach, 2015, etc.) thriller series finds the Sweetwater family searching for one of their own—19-year-old Augie, who inexplicably vanished in Mexico.
Though it’s been only a couple of days since Raul Sweetwater’s heard from his son, Augustus, he’s still worried. Augie had been touring the Mexican Gulf Coast to touch base with clients of Sweetwater Marine, the family’s Texas business. Raul voices his concerns to his uncle Charlie, and despite Charlie’s assurance that Augie is fine, the family’s phone calls to customers and the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City have turned up nothing. So Charlie and Raul head south. Charlie flies to the southern end of the Gulf in Veracruz, while his nephew works his way down the coast until the two reconnect in Tuxpan. Both men—hearing stories of Mexican drug cartels as well as a vicious one-eyed pirate named Mal de Ojo (Evil Eye)—surmise that someone has kidnapped Augie. In the meantime, the dazed teen awakens on a boat, held captive and secured by a chained metal collar. Now effectively a slave, Augie can wait for rescue or try to escape, either option providing the distinct possibility that he won’t survive. Arceneaux sets a breathless pace from the beginning by separating Charlie and Raul, who gather info and clues twice as quickly. In the same vein, perspective from Augie bolsters suspense. He’s introduced on the ship, initially baffled as to how he ended up there. His scenes are often bleak, courtesy of his brutal captors, but the story eases tension with comic relief. Augie, for example, imagines a letter to his family: “Dear Mom, Dad, and Sis—It’s been a good month for pillage and plunder.” The tale references events from preceding books, though narrative context ensures readers who are just joining the series won’t be lost.
Proficiently develops characters, relationships, and storylines in the midst of nonstop action.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9968797-4-3
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Brent Douglass
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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