A capital rogues-to-riches entertainment—with precious little sex or violence but a wealth of inside information on...
Erdman (The Swiss Account, The Palace, etc.) makes a welcome return to form with a blue-chip tale of high finance and low cunning in the post-Milken era.
Released from a Club Fed after having served half of a six- year sentence for stock-parking offenses, charismatic Willy Saxon heads (by limo) to San Francisco to make a covert comeback in the investment business, from which the SEC has barred him for life. With a little help from friends he refused to betray to government prosecutors, plus a $60-million stash in Liechtenstein, well- connected Willy becomes a silent partner in both a Bay Area brokerage house and a regional credit-rating agency. Saxon also recruits a motley crew of computer freaks, white-collar felons, and out-of-work scientists to launch a world-class trading operation at a well-appointed ranch he's purchased in the neighboring wine country. When institutional demand for the ingenious derivatives developed by his nerds proves brisk, Willy has to obtain them more capital. He gets it by placing zero-coupon municipal bonds (ostensibly underwritten and graded for obscure California cities by his captive firms) with trusting money managers who file and forget the debt in billion-dollar portfolios. Since tax-exempt obligations of this sort are sold at a discount and pay no interest until redeemed at face value at maturity, Saxon has undisturbed use of the vast sums the bogus issues yield. Before long, adversaries on both sides of the law begin to suspect a scam. While they're closing in, however, wily Willy's outcast prodigies engineer a killing in the currency market, which gets their employer more than even and ensures appropriate retribution for the perfidious villains of the piece.
A capital rogues-to-riches entertainment—with precious little sex or violence but a wealth of inside information on fiscal chicanery.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-312-85380-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1993
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
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