A familiar plot fortified by delightful characters in a glacial setting.
Recovering a decades-old crashed plane promises a fortune for a small group in Alaska, provided everyone can avoid double-crosses and murderous drug dealers, in Bass’ (In the Black, 2015, etc.) thriller.
Sure that they’ll flunk out of Ohio State University, pals Albert Stiles and Wesley “Waxy” Biederby leave school and head west. Or northwest, with Albert believing the two can amass wealth working on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. Unfortunately, those jobs require a one-year state residency, and opportunity slips further away once Albert’s dad cuts off his credit card. The friends wind up with dishwashing and bartending gigs at the bar Beantown Bob’s Fenway Park West. Albert, still aiming for a pipeline job (and testing his luck by initiating a sexual relationship with Beantown Bob’s girlfriend, CiCi), hopes to acquire a union card for sale. Waxy, meanwhile, may have another way of striking it rich. According to co-worker Moe the Eskimo, a cargo plane transporting government payroll (presumably millions) crashed 30-odd years ago near his village. Jimmi the Pilot proves essential in searching the mountain, but when his latest drug deal with Mexican smugglers goes bad, he wants to find the loot as quickly as possible. Digging through a glacier is dangerous enough, but as others, including Albert, join the hunt, some may readily deceive to ensure the split goes fewer ways. Readers should recognize the story of a ragtag crew scouring for cash or gold, so betrayals are almost inevitable. Bass’ tale, however, exudes freshness, courtesy of a memorable snowy backdrop and indelible characters. The plane’s potential location, for one, makes a search unmistakably arduous, and there’s inherent risk for Waxy using a chainsaw in an ice tunnel. The narrative, too, offers no definite good or bad guys. Jimmi is part of a shady smuggling operation but also clearly fond of Waxy, while Albert does something that would make the average villain cringe. The only notable female players, CiCi and waitress Emma, don’t do much beyond forming romantic pairings with Albert and Waxy. But thankfully, neither woman takes guff from anyone—in her first scene, Emma’s thoroughly unimpressed by Albert and Waxy’s joke-laden dinner order.
A familiar plot fortified by delightful characters in a glacial setting.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9833807-6-4
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Electron Alley Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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