Though best known for his occult horror (Midnight Sun, 1990, etc.), Campbell built his career on psychothrillers barely tinged with the uncanny (The Doll Who Ate His Mother, 1976, etc.). Here's a new one, about an antic serial killer, intriguing for its unusual blend of horror and farce but lacking much punch. Jack Orchard, owner of a suburban Liverpool video-store, believes wholeheartedly in luck—which he's fresh out of: As the story opens, a series of pratfalls causes his shop to burn down; he's denied a bank loan; and he learns that his shop was uninsured. But then a chain letter arrives, promising to ``turn ill luck into good'' if Jack mails it to 13 others, which he does. And it seems as if his luck is changing—until a hoped-for job falls through and his daughter is attacked by thugs. To Jack's increasingly addled, numerology-clogged mind, this can mean only that some recipients of his letter failed to mail it on in turn, with misfortune rebounding on ``whoever's most accident-prone''—i.e., Jack. What to do? Why, confront the culprits and—for reasons Campbell never quite makes clear—begin to kill them off with a blowtorch. The first murder does seem to improve Jack's fortune—he lands a job—but when his wife loses hers, it's time for several more deaths, most depicted in gruesome slapstick (``a convulsion of his whole body sent Foster jackknifing backward several feet. `Murder,' he shrieked, `murgle, murglub,' and sank''), until Jack becomes known as the ``Mersey Burner''—and then slips off to Greece, where he ends his spree. There's no doubt a gleam in Campbell's eye as he confounds thriller conventions—no cop-vs.-killer here, and little suspense- -and lays on the wryness, but, despite lively language and character-shading, Jack's evolution into a killer doesn't wash, the murders become repetitive, and the ending lies flat on the page. Back to the occult, Mr. Campbell, please.
Pub Date: June 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-312-85350-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1992
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
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