For the first two-thirds of his new novel, Smith (Due North, 1992, etc.) can't decide whether he's writing a study of one man's Vietnam post-traumatic stress syndrome or a vulnerable-loner- fights-against-impossible-odds thriller. When he chooses (less pretentiously) the latter, the jettisoned baggage allows him a flashy sprint to the finish line. Evan Scott, an architect out of Groton and Yale who excels at polo and fencing, is standing atop a very wrong edifice one threatening Manhattan night when he sees a young woman fall from an unfinished Madison Avenue skyscraper across the street. Not too many days pass before be learns that: a) she didn't fall but was pushed; and b) his bruited presence has become a threat to those behind the pushing. Suddenly additional people are dropping dead, including coworker/lover, Sanchia Fuentes. Frustratingly, no one in whom Scott confides believes the accumulating mishaps are anything more than coincidental. The skeptics include Scott's wife, Catherine (herself privileged and quite an upper-class bigot); his bosses, who suggest an immediate vacation; and the police, who think Scott's cries of wolf may be a cover-up for homicidal tendencies. Those who know Scott is speaking the truth are the three Hindu brothers who lend their name to Rao Electric, the firm doing the wiring for ill-fated 366 Madison. (They've been monkeying around on their highly recompensed job, though neither Evan nor the reader gets the details till the very end.) Only an aging newsstand owner named Ram Dass Lal takes Scott's side and, indeed, insists on helping bell the meanies in their lairs. Having found in the Raos a fresh twist on developers-as-'90s-villains, Smith gets the action moving from New York City to New Jersey to Maine with guns blazing, knives flashing, elevators soaring, guts spilling, blood spurting. On balance, good Karma. (Literary Guild selection)
Pub Date: Nov. 15, 1994
ISBN: 0-525-93773-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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
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