A hyperactive ride for fans of high-octane fiction.
An engaging romp through the fast, furious world of professional motor sports.
South Florida novelist Ducote draws on her life as the globe-trotting wife of decorated race car driving professional Chapman Ducote in a bracing novel that swells with action and intrigue. Coleton Loren, one of Miami Beach’s fastest and most successful race car drivers, is handsome, shrewd and, for his chosen sport, uncharacteristically tall. His racing prowess has earned him not only fame but an opulent lifestyle that feeds his ego and his womanizing. Nothing, however, prepares him for an unexpected accident on the track that fractures his right leg. Although the injury jeopardizes his chances in the upcoming Le Mans racing series, it also introduces him to young, beautiful Dr. Camilla Harlow, commissioned to rehabilitate the dashing racer back to prime form. She soon finds herself unethically enamored of her needy patient, and embroiled in Loren’s adrenaline-fueled lifestyle. Ducote creatively portrays the story’s secondary characters, including Loren’s ruthless, former racing team owner Jose Gomez (who’s constantly at odds with Loren’s agent, Ira Goldstein); wealthy financier Arthur Elrod; and George Wachner, Loren’s longtime friend and an aging Le Mans pro driver, who’s reluctant to retire before defeating his nemesis, Klaus Ulrick. The story moves at a brisk clip and incorporates just enough sex, action, duplicity, murder and coast-to-coast melodrama to keep readers glued to the page. Ducote employs plenty of racing vernacular and knows the fast-paced, thrilling racing atmosphere well; she notes in her acknowledgments that many plot twists are derived from real-life events. At more than 400 pages, readers may find the story a bit bloated at times, and some of the prose a bit awkward, but those who enjoy a rollicking story full of twists, turns, action and romance will surely be satisfied. Ducote’s cliffhanger ending is a true shocker and hints at possible further installments in Coleton Loren’s wild world.
A hyperactive ride for fans of high-octane fiction.Pub Date: May 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-578-12199-4
Page Count: 415
Publisher: Warchest Publishing, LLC.
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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