Perhaps Campbell's most inspired suspense novel yet, rivaling Midnight Sun (1990), though purged of horror and the supernatural. Violence is on the rise in Manchester, especially among the young, as the warm, well-spoken Travis family finds when it moves to England from Florida. Even back home, 12-year-old Marshall was bullied and beaten, a nightmare that follows him to Manchester, where his mother, Suzanne, teaches a university course in violence and the cinema. Meantime, Marshall's bookseller dad, Don, is attacked in his car and threatened with a gun by the psychotic Phil Fancy, who escapes. When local newspapers print an unflattering drawing of him, Phil spitefully attacks young Marshall, sprains his ankle when turning on Don and, unable to flee, is arrested. He's given a jail sentence, which is bad news for the Travises, since the Fancy clan, all mad and bad, vow revenge. Then constables raid the Travis home and confiscate their entire US movie collection, from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to Singin' in the Rain: Films in Britain must be nipped of violence and bear the censors' seal. When two Fancys stomp Don to death, they receive sentences of five years for manslaughter rather than longer sentences for murder: Don had a gun, illegal in Britain. Then Phil's vengeful son Darren abducts Marshall and keeps him prisoner in the Fancy house, planning his death as Suzanne and the police begin searching for the lost boy. What raises the story above rather routine suspense is the poisonously befogged, rapacious Fancy family, its members infected with a smiling brainrot that the reader must experience to believe. To live page after page in the Fancy homestead is to know that you don't have to leave England to find the heart of darkness. A triumph of deadpan (but riotously twisted) dialogue and bizarre characters in a novel that would be hailed as savage satire were it not gussied up as suspense. Deserves daring celluloid.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-312-86035-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1996
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
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
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