A promising story about the control of information that doesn’t totally deliver.
Three reporters risk their lives to uncover a conspiracy to control the news.
Jack Jackson knows he’s one of an increasingly endangered breed in the news industry. Every time he finds himself dashing to the scene of an abortion-clinic bombing or some other calamity, only to realize that he’s the lone reporter there, he’s reminded of what’s become of the corporate media. He feels increasingly like an ad copywriter or publicist, churning out feel-good fluff. The higher-ups insist that consumers want to be entertained, and that if they don’t give people what they want, they’ll go somewhere else for their “news.” Jackson expects that Marcus Media’s acquisition of his paper will bring more of the same, until he notices strange things happening among his colleagues, and his boss orders him to attend a seminar at the company’s Editorial Theology Center. While he’s at the Center, his wife and fellow journalist Chick Carr and Hal Chambers, a freelance reporter, worry about his safety and dig for information on the buyout. The corporate executives–who take direct orders from the Germans owners of Marcus Media and its parent company Roswell Enterprises–are well aware of the mysterious Herr Keisling’s plans to control society through the media, using subliminal messages and other mind-control techniques. Still, even they don’t know, or choose not to guess, who they’re really working for. Fletcher (An Editor’s Guide to Perfect Press Releases, 2004, etc.), a veteran journalist, takes readers on a wild and engrossing ride, buttressed by extensive knowledge of the media industry. Through her three intrepid protagonists’ journeys, the author makes her point about the importance of the news media in a free society, and the ease with which the public can be manipulated into ceding power to authority. Still, Fletcher undermines her concern about these issues by tying them to a premise that’s thoroughly improbable, despite its historical relevance.
A promising story about the control of information that doesn’t totally deliver.Pub Date: July 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4196-8568-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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