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
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
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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