by Nicholas Kilmer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 1996
It isn't long after the harmless old gent who'd staked out his librarian lover Molly Riley's place turns up dead on the banks of the Charles that Fred Taylor comes on a much more appealing, though equally serendipitous, find in antique dealer Oona Imry's shop: a fragment of a painting that just might be by John Singleton Copley. Fred's employer, omnivorous art collector Clayton Reed, charms Oona into selling the handsomely painted squirrel at a man's feet, and Fred promptly goes hunting for the rest of the canvas. But the second third, though it's free for the taking, comes at a much higher price: Oona's pianist nephew Marek Hrics¢ gives it to Fred after semi-nude Oona's been ground under the wheels of a train. The lethal treasure hunt for the last third of the Copley (if that's what it is) is obviously tied in to the defunct stalker, and to the mumbo-jumbo malpractice of Satanic deprogrammer Dr. Eunice Cover-Hoover, who's been lurking equally portentously in the shadows of Molly's telephone from the word go. Watching Fred follow the trail from Copley to Satan—by way of Adult Rescue, Inc., a coven of the weirdest heavies you've ever seen outside the astral realm—stands in for the sort of mystery that would have you asking whodunit. Fred remains as charming as in his debut (Harmony in Flesh and Black, 1995), and if the culprits aren't exactly the stuff of nightmares, they pack all the menace of good comic-book villains.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-8050-3666-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1996
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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