The real-life 1930s suicide of an RJ Reynolds tobacco heir is the point of departure for this mind-bogglingly tangled southern-royalty melodrama. Golden, bored Kyle King Castleton has everything, but it looks like he doesn't want it when he's found shot dead in his sleeping porch, leaving behind his boundless future, his tobacco millions, his beautiful showgirl bride Faith, and his scheming family, ``the most well known in the entire South.'' After a busybody county attorney succeeds in getting a murder indictment despite the initial impression of suicide, the sheriff's son, green deputy Wyn Ainsley, sent to New York to escort Faith back to North Carolina, ends up getting seduced by her, and the tale seems about to settle into a legal-intrigue groove. But the surviving Castletons keep turning up in subplots that run away with the story. Kyle's brother Holt plots to get his hands on the stock willed to Kyle's heirs; his sister Gaby Inscott plans to shed her husband, a tediously attentive fortune-hunter, and legalize her comfortable affair with Castleton estate manager Russell Vance; his aunt Serena Burris sees her last chance to grab the family reins. Not to be outdone, Faith announces her posthumous pregnancy, threatening an heir who'll undo the best- laid Castleton plans, and labors to keep her Rego Park family connections out of the picture while still holding entranced Wyn in her thrall. But can even a natural-born performer Faith, nÇe Helen Siegenthaler, hold center stage when she's competing with race-baiting, cross-burning, TV sex, TV social history, and enough family/romantic/political treachery for three seasons in hell? Katkov (The Judas Kiss, 1991, etc.) plots as if he were throwing every intrigue he owned into a suitcase one jump ahead of the law, and heaven help any would-be heroes who try to wrestle this juicy soap opera into the kind of shape Sidney Sheldon fans will look for—and may not even miss.
Pub Date: Jan. 8, 1996
ISBN: 0-525-93843-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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