A first hardcover outing for Willy Hanson, a paperback hero who lives on a ketch as an ``atoning avenger.'' Visiting his old friend Cliff Blaylock in idyllic Stag Creek, New Jersey, Willy can't help noticing that Blaylock's saddened and distracted over the theft of a unique rarity he'd just purchased—a mint-condition 1793 penny inscribed ``AMERI''- -and over the shooting, the very same night the coin was stolen, of Willis McCord, the boy next door. In fact, Blaylock is much more troubled than Willy knows, since he shot Willis himself during a robbery in which Willis's accomplice and drug source, Heavy Laval, got away with a briefcase filled with $20,000 in bullion (whose value even a lug like Heavy can appreciate) and the AMERI penny (making his total haul, Heavy thinks, $20,000.01). Now, as Willy and his p.i. partner Coley Doctor are combing the streets to get a line on the coin, Blaylock is doing everything he can to keep them from finding Heavy. And just to keep the pot boiling, Heavy, realizing what a haul he's made, is planning in his elephantine way to blackmail his victim; Heavy's bossman, Florida druglord Bocco Lamas, has come to New York to supervise damage control (meaning, in Heavy's case, prompt extermination); and Red Irons, Bocco's middleman, is struggling to keep Bocco happy, and himself alive. It's an Elmore Leonard setup, but completely without Leonard's fizz and wit, because Arnote (Hong Kong, China, 1996) writes so flatly (Blaylock muses sensitively, ``I've killed poor Willis McCord and things will never be the same''; later, Willis's grieving mother, who turns out to be one hot mama, memorializes her son: ``The Blaylocks were very special people to young Willis''). Even so, the tale moves along at a snappy pace, and few readers will guess who'll join Willy in the small circle of survivors. Functional and depthless as an aluminum-sided split-level a long way down the road from swanky Stag Creek.
Pub Date: June 10, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-86198-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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