By the author of two superior adventures set in Roman Britain (A Shadow of Gulls, 1977; The Crow Goddess, 1979), a splendid Elizabethan cat-and-mouse, spy-and-chase tale based on real events of 1583, and featuring dazzling, death-teasing principals surrounding a Spanish plot to assassinate Elizabeth I. Spies and counterspies, warriors, poets and poet madmen, pawns and populace- -all speak here in a diction remarkably echoing with the flavor of an earlier English—gamy, efficient, unobtrusive, unblemished by sprinklings of ``i` faith'' or other cribbings from the Bard. Sir Francis Walsingham, the Queen's chief of her secret service, directs from his chambers the latest chase of plotters against the Queen. The Mundus Papyri (world of paper) is what Walsingham dubs the blizzard of clues from purloined letters and bits and scraps of information. Meanwhile, in seedy London digs, Becket—penniless, a veteran of wars—feeds his pet rat, while roaming and discoursing with angels is a former schoolmate in law, mad Ralph Strangways (``Poor Tom''), whose brother Adam sent him to Bedlam to suffer. Brother Adam is about to perform the holy duty of killing that ``pure white hind,'' Elizabeth I, by aiming through the eye of a parade dragon. Then worrying, gut-gripping, in the two worlds of paper and swords and daggers, is brilliant cryptographer and clerk to Walsingham, Simon Ames, a Portuguese Jew who will track down the chief traitor, witness horror in the Tower, comfort a dying woman, and be the target of several murder attempts involving his new friend Becket, the noble soul of less than noble activities. Inevitably, however, the firedrake (dragon) will move to the Queen.... Finney's brainy sleuths race like whippets toward the prey, while tossing up more turmoil, deaths, and betrayal beside a treacherous Thames, although here and there are times of quiet love, companionship, and slap-up humor. In all: just fine. (And there's an invaluable list of characters with real personages starred.)
Pub Date: June 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-312-07749-1
Page Count: 263
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
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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