Another arresting take on the US Navy from Deutermann (The Edge of Honor, 1994, etc.)—this time in a military police procedural that features miscegenation, high-level infighting, and a genuinely horrifying hatchet man. Stuck with Pentagon duty as he awaits a return to sea, Commander Dan Collins is ordered to look into the killing of a young black officer whose body has been discovered, after two years, in a mothballed battleship in the USN's Philadelphia shipyard. Collins's assignment infuriates the civilians running the Naval Investigative Service, whose bungled probes of the Tailhook scandal and the gun-turret explosion aboard the Iowa cost it the confidence of upper-echelon admirals. With help from Grace Snow, a comely NIS operative detailed to assist Collins in his inquiries, the straight-arrow officer soon ties the Philadelphia murder to a contemporaneous fatal traffic accident in Washington, D.C. Once he discovers that the brother-and-sister victims were both Navy officers, Collins suspects a coverup: and he's on the right track, since the double homicide was the handiwork of Malachi Ward, an ex- MP who does dirty jobs as a security consultant for a varied clientele in the nation's capital. Although Collins and Snow are pulled off the case by senior aides afraid they'll uncover an illicit affair one of their bosses had with the dead lieutenant's equally dead sister, Ward learns that the two haven't stopped asking questions. Aware that they could nail him on their way to his paymaster, the crafty, remorseless killer makes several attempts on their lives. Collins and Snow (who have found each other amid the story's career-threatening turmoil) take Ward's best shots and survive a finale on the Potomac's banks to unmask the four-star villains of the piece. First-class entertainment with full-tilt action and three- dimensional characters credibly concerned about abuse of power, exposure, retribution, and other of a workaday world's manifold cares.
Pub Date: June 23, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-11996-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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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