Tight action sequences and a high-energy plot that readers should relish.
A military veteran’s unpleasant encounter with a biker gang prompts an investigation into criminals using a Texas prison for their own gain in this thriller.
Dan Cowell and his common-law wife, Linda Parker, are enjoying a relaxing life in Key West, Florida. At least until Dan tries stopping bikers from tormenting an elderly couple on the highway, ending with both him and Linda beaten and humiliated. Dan’s friend and fellow Navy vet, Carl Blackadar, who does “discreet” government work, suggests tracking down the gang. This would benefit Carl as well. Dan can ID the main assailant, Tank, whose gang Carl has linked to international theft and murder. Dan agrees; later, his eyewitness status is the likely motive for an assassination attempt against the common-law couple. The two men begin in Ecuador while Linda and her ex-journalist pal (and Carl’s girlfriend), Melanie Olson, investigate the matter separately. Mel believes she’s found Tank in a Texas jail, where the women travel under the pretense of writing a magazine article. Something is clearly wrong with the prison: How can Tank be in other countries if he’s locked up, and why doesn’t Linda recognize him? Things escalate when Dan and Carl get word that the two women have disappeared. McHugh’s (Deadlines, 2010, etc.) novel is brimming with action. Scuffles are quick and startling, while realistically varying in outcomes: some of the fights the good guys win; some they lose; and some involve frying pans. Characters have just as much impact, especially the women; Linda, a Moskita from Honduras, proves a formidable opponent against any attacker. The story initially bounces the perspective between the paired-off characters, but as they gradually split apart (for different reasons), the scenes shorten and the pace increases. Nevertheless, the author adeptly depicts the environment; at the prison, the women trek through “corridors that cradle” a dank musk “of male sweat as well as hints of fecal vapor, stale urine and vomit, all laced by a turpentine reek of Pine-Sol.”
Tight action sequences and a high-energy plot that readers should relish.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9987320-7-7
Page Count: 285
Publisher: Elkheart Books
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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