A light-hearted, heroic hash of genres.
The cast of Kwatee (2005) reunites to retrieve microfilm stolen by Madame Lai, dreaded pirate queen of the South China Sea.
It’s 1954, and clairvoyant agents and soon-to-be-married couple Rick Reilly and Loo Tao-hua, aka Rick and Ricki, connive to attract the pirate queen’s attention with an elaborate con, putting word out that her film is fake and that they are in possession of the real deal–and offering it to the highest bidder. To this end, Rick and Ricki purchase a club as a front, and with Wiccan priestess Branwen Smythe reassemble a crack team from the Kwatee adventure. JD Chartier and his wife Anna, Homer Tingle and Benny Fink all converge on Macao to play their parts in the con. An ominous storm and forced crash landing, not to mention preternatural inklings on the part of our clairvoyants, suggest there’s more to the case than stolen film. In fact, there is something otherworldly about Madame Lai, whose touch turns brains to soup, and whose cohort, Captain Chen, unleashes centipedes on his victims. Covert operatives visit the back room of Rick’s Cabaré Americano where Ricki, also a part-time actress and singer, performs nightly. The con proceeds swimmingly. It’s spy versus spy in the alleys of old Macao–custom-tailored suits conceal pistols fitted with silencers, Rick and Ricki’s banter resembles The Thin Man’s Nick and Nora, and they run their operation with the cool of a Casino Royale James Bond. There’s even an inept duo of Chinese operatives named Yin and Yang, and a cop, Lt. Carlos Antonio Sebastian, who might have wandered in to investigate the surge of corpses popping up from unnatural causes. Downey’s book is epic pulp, blending fantasy, magical realism, intrigue and mystery, but descriptions and attempts at humor sometimes come off half-baked. The crescent moon, superimposing ominous horns over a mountain, is like “a letter C lying on its ass.” Smoke causes “a three-way cough-fest.” However, such turns of phrase aren’t entirely inappropriate in the off-kilter humor of a story that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Despite occasional stalls when characters recount, at length and without fresh information, events that have already been revealed, there’s much to engage and delight readers as this duo and their band sleuth toward the dark truth behind Madame Lai.
A light-hearted, heroic hash of genres.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-4196-9086-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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