A nice portrait of life on the make, with a genuine, gritty feel and some memorable characters, but Lyons (Going for Broke,...
Sprawling account of a small-time gambler who hustles his way through the long, hot summer of 1988.
Like all gamblers, Hawk thinks he can beat the odds and refuses to learn when experience teaches otherwise. Now more than ten grand in debt to loan shark Armand, Hawk still thinks he can clear the books when his number comes in. He’s had big ambitions ever since he met Sammy, an old-school New York hustler who showed him one election year how he could make more money hawking campaign buttons in a day that he made as a pizza boy in a whole week. That was during the Nixon administration, and now Hawk is heading down to Atlanta for the convention that’s going to nominate Michael Dukakis. He’s under the gun, all right: Armand’s goon, Mr. Skinhead, has already cut off one of Hawk’s toes, with a promise of more to come if he misses his next payment. But there’s positive encouragement too, in the form of his new girlfriend Carla, a nubile neon-sign artist with a quick wit and a little girl from her old marriage. Hawk is still deep in the red after Atlanta, so he looks to the Republican convention in New Orleans to make up the difference. Meanwhile, Carla’s sleazy ex-husband Nelson has found out about her affair with Hawk and has begun stalking her. And Hawk’s old mentor Sammy is in the hospital for heart surgery. So Hawk has plenty of worries beside his own. After the convention, all the loose ends of Hawk’s life come back together in New York, where a gangland battle in one stroke solves most of his problems—but not all.
A nice portrait of life on the make, with a genuine, gritty feel and some memorable characters, but Lyons (Going for Broke, 1991, etc.) tries to put in a bit too much 1980s history, and the story rambles more than it needs to.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-59228-409-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Lyons Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2004
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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