Bloated but bouncy, bound for big sales.
DeMille’s biggest yet deserves high points for entertainment and readability, though nothing of his has been as moving or richly written as 1990’s The Gold Coast.
Up Country is a sequel to The General’s Daughter (1992), filmed with John Travolta as DeMille’s Army homicide detective Paul Brenner. Despite DeMille liking the film, it stuck closely to his plot and was a gloomy dud. Though lighter in tone, Up Country also turns on a bloody central event and an imponderable moral problem: Brenner’s old boss Colonel K. Karl Hellman, head of the Criminal Investigation Division, calls the retired Chief Warrant Officer Brenner back in for a special op. Brenner’s sent back to Vietnam, where he did two tours during the war (as did Lt. Nelson DeMille), to look into a murder that took place 30 years ago. A Vietnamese soldier wrote a letter to his brother, later recovered by the CID, that told of an American captain shooting a fellow lieutenant in the Treasury Building within the Citadel in Quan Tri City, then looting the treasury’s safe. This monster later ran a black market that rewarded him with big money. Colonel Hellman actually knows who this captain is, but wants Brenner to investigate cold and see what he can find out as hard evidence for a military trial. Brenner lands in Saigon and falls in with Susan Weber, a businesswoman who sticks to him throughout his investigation and is, of course, far more deadly than she seems. This gives DeMille a chance to warm up his earlier fancy sophisticated dialogue between Brenner and CID rape investigator Cynthia Sunhill from The General’s Daughter, although Susan, while mysterious, sexy and dangerous, turns out to be a less ingenious foil than Cynthia throughout several hundred pages of two-person dialogue that only too often rehashes what we already know. The climax lands Brenner in the same hot water that got him retired/fired.
Bloated but bouncy, bound for big sales.Pub Date: Jan. 29, 2002
ISBN: 0-446-54657-0
Page Count: 700
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2001
Catch-22 is also concerned with some of war's horrors and atrocities, and it is at times painfully grim.
Catch-22 is an unusual, wildly inventive comic novel about World War II, and its publishers are planning considerable publicity for it.
Set on the tiny island of Pianosa in the Mediterranean Sea, the novel is devoted to a long series of impossible, illogical adventures engaged in by the members of the 256th bombing squadron, an unlikely combat group whose fanatical commander, Colonel Cathcart, keeps increasing the men's quota of missions until they reach the ridiculous figure of 80. The book's central character is Captain Yossarian, the squadron's lead bombardier, who is surrounded at all times by the ironic and incomprehensible and who directs all his energies towards evading his odd role in the war. His companions are an even more peculiar lot: Lieutenant Scheisskopf, who loved to win parades; Major Major Major, the victim of a life-long series of practical jokes, beginning with his name; the mess officer, Milo Minderbinder, who built a food syndicate into an international cartel; and Major de Coverley whose mission in life was to rent apartments for the officers and enlisted men during their rest leaves. Eventually, after Cathcart has exterminated nearly all of Yossarian's buddies through the suicidal missions, Yossarian decides to desert — and he succeeds.
Catch-22 is also concerned with some of war's horrors and atrocities, and it is at times painfully grim.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 1961
ISBN: 0684833395
Page Count: 468
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1961
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A treat for fans of The Evil Dead or Zombieland, complete with affordable solutions for better living.
A hardy band of big-box retail employees must dig down for their personal courage when ghosts begin stalking them through home furnishings.
You have to give it up for the wave of paranormal novels that have plagued the last decade in literature; at least they’ve made writers up their games when it comes to finding new settings in which to plot their scary moments. That’s the case with this clever little horror story from longtime pop-culture journalist Hendrix (Satan Loves You, 2012, etc.). Set inside a disturbingly familiar Scandinavian furniture superstore in Cleveland called Orsk, the book starts as a Palahniuk-tinged satire about the things we own—the novel is even wrapped in the form of a retail catalog complete with product illustrations. Our main protagonist is Amy, an aimless 24-year-old retail clerk. She and an elderly co-worker, Ruth Anne, are recruited by their anal-retentive boss, Basil (a closet geek), to investigate a series of strange breakages by walking the showroom floor overnight. They quickly uncover two other co-workers, Matt and Trinity, who have stayed in the store to film a reality show called Ghost Bomb in hopes of catching a spirit on tape. It’s cute and quite funny in a Scooby Doo kind of way until they run across Carl, a homeless squatter who's just trying to catch a break. Following an impromptu séance, Carl is possessed by an evil spirit and cuts his own throat. It turns out the Orsk store was built on the remains of a brutal prison called the Cuyahoga Panopticon, and its former warden, Josiah Worth, has returned from the dead to start up operations again. It sounds like an absurd setting for a haunted-house novel, but Hendrix makes it work to the story’s advantage, turning the psychological manipulations and scripted experiences that are inherent to the retail experience into a sinister fight for survival.
Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59474-526-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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