The plot-soggy sequel to this sister-writing team's debut legal procedural (Motion to Suppress, 1995) further muddies the waters of feisty lawyer Nina Reilly's Lake Tahoe past. Suffering physical and psychological scars from the shooting that concluded her previous trial, Nina thwarts the Sweet family's attempt to suppress filmmaker Theresa London's sleazy documentary about the 12-year-old disappearance of their teenage daughter Tamara. While waiting in Nina's office, London, a lynx-clad femme fatale with all the requisite screws loose, coyly suggests to Nina's 11-year-old son, Bob, that he find his biological father. Bob asks for help from p.i. Paul von Waggoner, who is about to ask Nina to marry him. Paul finds Kurt Scott, an expatriate former Tahoe forest ranger and Nina's first lover, playing Bach fugues in Germany. Something more than nostalgia brings Scott back to Tahoe, where he is arrested after fleeing the scene of Terry London's murder, Terry's garbled, dying videotaped confession suggesting that Scott fired the rifle that killed her. The authors have enough respect for legal ethics to have Nina at least question the numerous conflicts of interest before deciding to defend her former lover. But the plot is made even more cumbersome when Scott, having seen Terry's documentary, breaks out of jail and locates Tamara Sweet's remains. Then Nina discovers that her brother, Matt, who takes tourists parasailing on the lake, may be involved in Terry's murder. Savoring their novel's resort setting, the O'Shaughnessys offer glimpses into the kinky lives of a casino showgirl, a burned- out hippie guitarist, and his monster-truck driving son. Occasional outbursts of droll humor relieve Nina's lugubrious concerns about what effect so much twisted melodrama will have on her son. Overplotted, then, and frequently silly, though redeemed by local color, screwball dialogue (``first we make love, then you won't take my calls''), and grimly realistic insider stuff about lawyers at their best and worst.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-385-31413-2
Page Count: 419
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1996
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
