Food writing to die for, but little humor in the seasoning.
Feisty horror stylist Brite—of 1992’s Lost Souls, still her best—returns with a sequel to Liquor (2004).
Previously, two young gays, Rickey and G-man, opened their own restaurant in New Orleans and based their entire menu on fancy booze-flavored dishes. Here, it’s two years later, and they’ve become famous, as has Liquor, with great reviews in the New York Times and Gourmet. But now a local review by Humphrey Wildblood seems to trash the restaurant while really trashing shady chef Lenny Duveteaux, whose investment in Liquor makes him part-owner. Actually, the bad review has been prompted by New Orleans DA Placide Treat, who, despite being admired during his 24 years in office, fears that Lenny’s personal lawyer, Oscar De La Cerda, will give him a strong run for office. Treat, it happens, unleashed his son Humphrey Wildblood (a nom de plume) onto Liquor. Rickey and G-man want to buy Lenny out and own Liquor wholly but haven’t the cash. When Texas zillionaire Fred Firestone, who owns the failing Firestone restaurant in Dallas, offers Rickey $10,000 for a week’s consultancy in Dallas, Rickey at first thinks no, but when the wiring of Liquor’s old cooler setup fails and heavy expense arises for a new cooler, he chooses to take up the offer. Lenny, meanwhile, has been arrested by DA Treat and had his ten years of taped telephone calls impounded. When critic Wildblood returns for another meal, he and Rickey have a fuming face-off, with Wildblood making Rickey an offer to give evidence against Lenny. Soon Rickey’s off to Dallas to help award-winning chef and author Cooper Stark straighten out his Dallas menu. After getting raves for his help, he returns to the Big Easy only to hear that Coop has killed himself and willed Rickey his entire estate, including an apartment house. What is it that links Fred Firestone in Dallas to DA Placide Treat?
Food writing to die for, but little humor in the seasoning.Pub Date: March 22, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-5008-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Three Rivers/Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2005
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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