A rousing tale of true adventure in which a homespun band of British vigilantes takes on and destroys a cabal of assassins-for- hire. World-class explorer Fiennes (Living Dangerously, 1988) plays a supporting role in the desperate events he was chosen to recount. At the heart of his stranger-than-fiction story are the Feather Men (so-called for their ``light touch''), a covert organization created to protect veterans of the SAS and other elite military units from reprisals by erstwhile foes. Among other adversaries, the vigilantes took on a band of contract killers known as ``the Clinic.'' In the pay of a Dhofari sheik bent on avenging five sons who had fallen in battle, the hit men stalked and liquidated four former British soldiers, all of whom had fought in Arabia's deserts. The cunning murders, which occurred over a 14-year span beginning in 1977, were carried out in such a way that local police dismissed any possibility of foul play. The Feather Men, however, soon concluded that those they had pledged to safeguard were homicide victims. In the skilled hands of the author—whom the Feather Men picked to tell their story—the facts of how a crew of retired army officers and civil servants working with volunteer operatives managed to track down and eliminate the professional assassins (whose fifth target was Fiennes himself) make for a riveting narrative. Thanks to a generous measure of dramatic license, moreover, the same holds true for the author's vivid reconstruction of episodes on which he was not briefed by principals or participants. Excepting this cavil and the moral ambiguities of rough justice: A marvelously entertaining account of good versus unequivocal evil. (Eight pages of photos—not seen.)
Pub Date: March 23, 1993
ISBN: 0-688-12134-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1993
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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