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
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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