Riding as a passenger on a ship sailed by a madman, McCutchan's WW II Royal Naval hero Donald Cameron returns (Cameron's Commitment, etc.)—this time to face the worst the North Atlantic can offer in the way of weather and warfare. It should be something of a pleasure cruise since Lieutenant Commander Cameron is more or less off duty. He and his crew have caught a ride from England to Norfolk, Virginia, in an out-of-action aircraft carrier. The sailing, however, is far from smooth. The captain of His Majesty's carrier Charger appears to believe he has a pipeline to the divinity. Divinely guided, Captain Mason-Goodson feels free to ram the U-boat that attacks them in their first days out and then to steam off the ordered track to effect a rescue of persons unknown from a wreck no one else has heard of. Oddly enough, there's a lifeboat to be found but only one survivor, and the diversion has placed Charger in the path of a killer storm. Disregarding the advice of his inferiors, Mason-Goodson listens only to God and fails to notice that the monster storm has not only crippled the ship's steering but is about to rip the bridge from the flight deck of the hastily welded ship. Fortunately for the crew, injuries incapacitate the madman and Donald Cameron is able to step in and run things. But there is, alas, little left to run since the steering can't be fixed until the storm eases off. Charger is at the mercy of the waves—but when the winds at last die down, and Cameron is able to enlist some help from a couple of healthier ships, Captain Mason-Goodson rises from his sickbed, the crew starts to discuss mutiny, and Nazi torpedo bombers take to the air. All business. Very British. Quite good.
Pub Date: Oct. 14, 1993
ISBN: 0-312-09762-X
Page Count: 176
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1993
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
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