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IN HARM'S WAY

Realistic first novel by a British chemist and bio-researcher now turned to suspense fiction, specifically a medical detective thriller. One night Tony Marchbank, a medical researcher, gets a call from his boss, Steven Hamble, who suddenly needs to see him. But as Tony drives to Hamble's house on the outskirts of London, Hamble is presumably committing suicide by driving a car filled with gasoline into the brick wall of an old barn. But was it really murder, Tony wonders? Two weeks later, the late Hamble is replaced by a new director, the nonentity Oliver Earnshaw, who tells Tony to wrap up Hamble's leftover Roughburn project quickly. The more he looks into Roughburn, however, the more Tony sees that a terrible devastation of the town's children by an epidemic of cancer in the early '50s is being covered upwith newspapers disappearing and a virus introduced into his computer wiping out three years' worth of data after Tony has gone public in the newspapers. And not only is his data lost, but an attempt on his life nearly burns him alive and he's the victim of character assassination by an old colleague. Meanwhile, Tony hopes to retain the affection of his ever-chillier wife, Margaret, a rising force in her male-dominated insurance firm. As Tony at last finds out when she abruptly leaves him, Margaret has fallen into a lesbian passion for his own research assistant, Christine Lambeth. But he and Chris push on, and they are joined by reporter Lois Love, who finds Tony's original story falling to pieces for lack of evidence. Then they discover that it was government scientists who caused the cancer epidemic and are now attacking Tony.... The lesbian subplot is as gripping as the tale's medical spine. Breeze's clichÇ-free style promises even richer harvests ahead.

Pub Date: July 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-312-13094-5

Page Count: 240

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1995

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MAGIC HOUR

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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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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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