A funny, energetic tale about the war between primness and hedonism.
A femme fatale lures a naïve lawyer into a stock swindle in this jaunty Eisenhower-era caper.
As a hotshot young Wall Street mergers-and acquisitions lawyer with a lovely fiancée, Jack Preston is living the American Dream circa 1954. Alas, something is missing from his life–namely sex. The 27-year-old is still a virgin, and he can’t muster much heat for his frigid bride-to-be, who makes it clear he’ll get no more than a kiss on the cheek until their wedding day, which is a year away. Enter bombshell Alice Mercer, who wears tight sweaters and clingy skirts, has a passion for boxing and baseball, and tears Jack’s clothes off whenever they’re alone. Jack never thinks to question her sexual ferocity, even when she ties him up, subjects him to exquisite erotic torments and forces him to blurt out the confidential details of the corporate mergers he’s working on as the price of relief. It’s only after federal investigators probing stock manipulations surrounding said mergers charge him with insider trading that Jack realizes he’s been bamboozled by a woman whose murky past connects her to industrial espionage, Vietnamese communists and the brothels of Hanoi. Hoffmann’s fizzy plot, which culminates in a crackerjack courtroom duel, makes no more sense than is strictly necessary, but the novel works as a canny, exuberant homage to the ’50s. The characters are energized by a new economy of easy affluence, electronics and advertising (financier Joseph P. Kennedy plays an odd but appropriate presiding role), and they navigate a cultural sea change as propriety and sexual repression give way to a tantalizing new ethos of sexual fulfillment. Hoffmann’s overripe sex scenes–“place my lips where it pleases you most, and I will worship you there”–make one long for a bit more sexual repression, but otherwise the well-tuned prose makes Jack’s wising-up an enjoyable romp.
A funny, energetic tale about the war between primness and hedonism.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-6084-4059-7
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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