Two more crackerjack cases for bad-boy FBI agent Mike Devlin (Witness to the Truth, 1992), whose insurance company probably worries more about his hidebound bosses than about the bomber or agent-killer he's up against. It's a toss-up as to who's more dangerous: the blackmailer who's holding up the Seacard Corporation by detonating a bomb in the Seacard Children's Hospital and threatening an encore unless he's paid $5 million; or the killer who lured FBI agent John Lawson into an abandoned glove factory and executed him with two shots in the face. What's not in doubt is that Malcolm Sudder, the special agent in charge of the Detroit office, will do everything he can to grab the glory and duck the workand that Devlin and his buddy Bill Shanahan will do everything they can to put a spoke in Sudder's wheel. Sudder is delighted when the death of the apparent blackmailer gives him a chance to bury Devlin, already assigned to penitentially meaningless service, even deeper in the detail of writing the extortion cleanup report. Meanwhile, Sudder sucks up to Seacard VP James Pendleton, who's dangling a six-figure security job in front of him. Sudder can't see what Devlin soon does: that Pendleton's anxious to close the books on the bomber because he skimmed a million dollars of the payoff himself. As Devlin and Shanahan lay plots and pranks against Sudder and his toadies, Lawson's killer moves on to a second FBI murder and plans a third. Will Devlin be able to piece together the pattern behind the killings before Sudder's impossible deadline for the extortion report succeeds in getting him booted off the Bureau? And just how stylishly will he ring down the curtain? Once again, Lindsay shows that he can do it allcat-and- mouse plotting, deliciously nasty Bureau byplay, sharp domestic vignettes, dozens of sparkling anecdoteswith as much panache as his beleaguered, irresistible hero. (First printing of 50,000; author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-42616-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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