Mann's bid at a Clancy-sized thriller has an elegantly simple premise. Half a dozen IRA terrorists, aided by a couple of Palestinian free-lancers, seize Her Majesty's yacht Britannia as it lies off a Saudi port and hold it and its royal passengers for a fabulous ransom: the withdrawal of all British troops from Northern Ireland within one week. The kidnapping of the British Establishment is nothing new, having already been presented by writers as different as John Gardner and Peter Dickinson. And Mann's hushed reverence for HRH, ``the world's most enduring symbol of grace,'' doesn't give his victims much life. But they don't need much life when they're surrounded by fanatical IRA stalwarts like Dominic Behan, his looting, raping underlings, and his even more sinister mercenary boss, Edward Doyle, a former British marine whose grudge against the Crown is personal rather than political. After the initial violence of its seizure, the Britannia becomes the motionless eye of a political firestorm, as the Prime Minister realizes that a British withdrawal will be followed by vigilante pro-British rioting (Mann is especially convincing at showing the consequences of terrorism in London, in Belfast, even in Boston) and that Doyle plans to sink the Britannia whether or not his demands are met. Obviously a rescue mission is in order; and, fortunately, private radio contact with the royal hostages and their bodyguards will allow the counterterrorist command to coordinate preparations for rescue with a flashy operation in which Special Boat Squadron veteran Colin Lynch (The Traitor's Contract, 1991) will play a decisive role. The sharply realized action sequences make Mann's incredible premise compelling from the starting gun, and his grasp of its geopolitical implications is unnervingly persuasive. Grand summer reading—an outsized, perfectly realized thriller that doesn't carry any of Clancy's extra weight. (First printing of 50,000)
Pub Date: July 15, 1993
ISBN: 0-88184-933-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 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
BOOK REVIEW
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