In an account burdened by hazy reportage and sloppy writing, private investigator Pe§a's caseload, dazzling though it may be, reads like so many tall tales. Pe§a, an investigator with the detective agency Lynch International since 1966, gives the inside scoop on some of his investigations—the case of the Frito Lay kickbacks, the nasty corporate espionage war between Jordache and Guess? Jeans. With two coauthors in addition to Pe§a, the narrative clearly suffers from the too-many-cooks syndrome; Pe§a's ``files'' are an awkward meld of B-movie dialogue (``Man, was I naãve'') and amateurish attempts at setting the scene. The first few chapters, which focus on organized crime as represented by the the Scallino and Franzese families, seem included less for their value or relevance than for the fact that Matera, who covered these particular goombahs in his book Quitting the Mob, clearly enjoys the story. The dozens of references to 500-lb. head goon Larry Iorizzo as ``the fat man'' grow wearisome, and unsubtle insights like ``Everybody knows that attorneys have the morals of alley cats'' are scattered through the tough-talking text. Some of the later cases, particularly the Jordache-Marciano crime, promise a fascinating look at the tangled web connecting the IRS, private industry, big politics, and the media. But the intricacies of the case are lost amid glossed-over details, cornball dialogue, and Pe§a's frantic push to let readers know how bad the cops and the FBI are, compared with him. With three authors, it might be expected that at least one could have managed to show rather than tell. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Aug. 7, 1996
ISBN: 0-06-039175-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1996
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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