Known for his screenplay for The African Queen and his lifelong friendships with Ernest Hemingway and John Huston (about whom he wrote in Dangerous Friends, 1992), Viertel pens a clunky yet charming tale of an old American actor living in southern Spain. Narrator Robert Masters, 60ish, has spent most of the last 40 years in Europe after his career as a Hollywood supporting actor was terminated by a studio heavy who caught him in bed with the heavy's mistress. After two failed marriages and a moderately successful stint in European productions, Masters has retired to the Costa del Sol. As the novel begins, he is experiencing rough times: He can't afford his villa and rents it out, only to have the tenants skip town; he lives across the hall from his Spanish son- in-law, a private detective who is in the midst of a nasty separation from his daughter; and things aren't perfect with his longtime girlfriend. As a favor to his son-in-law, Masters agrees to tail Sir Cecil Collins, a British tycoon whose wife wants proof that he's cheating. When a thug holds up Collins on a golf course, Masters intervenes with a seven iron and is instantly befriended by the tycoon. Complicating matters further are Lady Collins, who makes passes at Masters, and the thug's sister, a beautiful flamenco dancer who uses her charms to convince the actor that he should drop the charges against her poor brother. Adding to the cast of rather stock characters is the arrival of a mega-yacht filled with old Hollywood friends, including the mistress who caused Masters's banishment, who have come to take him back to California. There's plenty of action and little emotion in this cool, detached novel, which nevertheless spins an entertaining yarn about a protagonist coming to grips with always being the odd man out.
Pub Date: Feb. 16, 1995
ISBN: 1-55611-434-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
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
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