At least Benchley (Rummies, 1989, etc.) didn't call it Tentacles—although he might have. Seventeen years after Jaws chewed up the bookracks, he now weaves another ripping sea-monster yarn, this one about an Architeuthis dux, or giant squid, menacing Bermuda. Benchley puts a 90's ecological spin on his story—the squid is on the prowl because its food supply has been diminished by wanton overfishing—but at bottom this is just another Jaws retread, opening, as did Jaws, with a night attack by the monster (here, on a castaway sailing couple) and concluding, as did Jaws, with a daylight frontal assault on a ship and crew determined to destroy it. In between, there's no romantic subplot like the one Spielberg discarded for his film of Jaws; the narrative is full- tilt action adventure, beginning with hero Whip Darling, the 41- year-old Bermudan fisherman who identifies the squid from its traces after it kills a pair of young twin divers, children of Manhattan media magnate Osborn Manning. Knowledge of the squid sends Bermuda tourism—and Darling's business—into a nose dive, but when a vengeance-minded Manning, accompanied by a Canadian squid-expert, tries to hire Darling to help hunt the squid, the Bermudian refuses: better poor than dead. He does agree to guide a submersible party, including a journalist and an obnoxious politico, to the squid's most likely haunt, leading to a terrific scene in which the hungry squid—still not fully revealed—toys with the submarine, then cracks it open to enjoy human-on-the-half- shell. Finally, Manning uses financial blackmail to force Darling to the hunt. The extended conclusion, surpassing Jaws's for excitement, sees the 100-foot squid climbing onto Darling's boat, tentacles and whips flying, eyes glowering, beak chomping, as Manning meets a predictable Ahab-like fate and Darling fights for his life. Although necessarily lacking the shock value of Jaws, this crafty, well-researched, exhilarating semi-sequel, powered by that marvelously demonic squid, who's every bit a match for the Great White, is bound to clamber way high up on the best-seller lists.
Pub Date: July 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-679-40355-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1991
An experienced novelist takes her sweet time to rich rewards: overall, an affecting saga, nicely handled.
Well-oiled Picoult sets her latest expertly devised search-and-rescue tale in rural New Hampshire, where a kidnapping case is uncovered 28 years too late.
As usual, Picoult (My Sister’s Keeper, 2004, etc.) spins a terrifically suspenseful tale by developing just the right human-interest elements to make a workable story. Single mom Delia Hopkins works with the local Wexton police and a bloodhound named Greta to find lost children. Delia’s close relationship with her divorced, 60-ish father, Andrew, who runs a senior-citizens’ home, grows strained when he’s suddenly arrested on kidnapping charges. The victim is Delia herself, named Bethany Matthews before her father fled with her from a drunken Mexican mother in Arizona. For 28 of her 32 years, Delia has believed her mother was dead. With Andrew extradited to Phoenix, the strange history of the case unravels, complicated by the choice of Delia’s fiancé, Eric (father of daughter Sophie), as Andrew’s lawyer and the assignment of her childhood buddy Fitz to cover the case for his newspaper. Picoult is a thorough, perceptive writer who deliberately presents alternating viewpoints, so that the truth seems constantly to be shifting. When Delia finally meets the attractive, remarried Elise Vasquez, she can’t quite vilify a woman who has been sober for many years and works as a curandera (healer). Her father’s story is both suspect and understandable, especially in light of his horrific treatment in prison, caught up in the violence of rival gangs. The magnetic Eric is a recovering alcoholic who falls off the wagon when stressed, while dependable, silent lover Fitz waits in the wings for his chance. Meanwhile, Delia and Sophie make a fascinating digression into the mythical world of the local Hopi tribe. At times, Picoult goes over the top, allowing Sophie to get lost so that Greta can find her and, at the eleventh hour, inserting into the trial the possibility of Delia’s sexual abuse .
An experienced novelist takes her sweet time to rich rewards: overall, an affecting saga, nicely handled.Pub Date: March 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7434-5454-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
Lincoln Rhyme, the quadriplegic criminalist of The Bone Collector (1997), returns to confront the uncannily resourceful killer who’s been hired to eliminate three witnesses in the last hours before their grand jury testimony. The first witness is no challenge for the Coffin Dancer, so dubbed after his distinctive tattoo: He simply plants a bomb on Hudson Air pilot/vice-president Edward Carney’s flight to Chicago and waits for the TV news. But Ed’s murder alerts the two other witnesses against millionaire entrepreneur-cum-weapons-stealer Phillip Hansen, and also alerts the NYPD and the FBI that both those witnesses—Ed’s widow, Hudson Air president Percey Clay, and her old friend and fellow-pilot Brit Hale—are on the hot seat. With 45 hours left before they’re scheduled to testify against Hansen, they bring Rhyme and his eyes and ears, New York cop Amelia Sachs, into the case. Their job: to gather enough information about the Coffin Dancer from trace evidence at the crime scene (for a start, scrapings from the tires of the emergency vehicles that responded to the Chicago crash) to nail him, or at least to predict his next move and head him off. The resulting game of cat and mouse is even more far-fetched than in The Bone Collector—both Rhyme and the Dancer are constantly subject to unbelievably timely hunches and brain waves that keep their deadly shuttlecock in play down to the wire—but just as grueling, as the Dancer keeps on inching closer to his targets by killing bystanders whose death scenes in turn provide Rhyme and Sachs with new, ever more precise evidence against him. Fair warning to newcomers: Author Deaver is just as cunning and deceptive as his killer; don’t assume he’s run out of tricks until you’ve run out of pages. For forensics buffs: Patricia Cornwell attached to a time bomb. For everybody else: irresistibly overheated melodrama, with more twists than Chubby Checker. (First printing of 100,000; Literary Guild main selection)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-684-85285-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1998
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