Still smarting over the kid-glove coddling the Japanese got in Rising Sun? You'll love Hoyt's out-of-the-ballpark chauvinism as he fulminates against those three age-old Japanese cultural traditions: trade protectionism, white slavery, and baseball. As US President Harold Olofson, no genius but a stout- hearted statesman, presses Foreign Minister Masayuki Yoshida for long overdue trade concessions, his vice president's daughter, Linda Shive, is booking passage incognito on a tramp steamer on the latest leg of her Far Eastern getaway. Big mistake. Before you can say sayonara, the steamer has been boarded by pirates on suspiciously friendly terms with the captain, Linda's cover is uncovered, and so is the rest of her, as she's purchased for $2,000 by yakuza godfather Shoji Kobayashi and inducted into the ways of the japayuki—bondage, slavery, forced sex of every flavor. It's all captured on those handy Japanese camcorders so that videotapes can be sent to her father and, Kobayashi threatens, to newspapers all over the world if the president doesn't back down on his trade demands. Enter former CIA spook James Burlane, fresh from his triumph over terrorists in Red Card (1994). His mission: to penetrate the club culture where a gaijin sticks out like a white thumb, take out Kobayashi's murderous ring of henchpersons, rescue the damsel, administer summary justice to Kobayashi, and give Olofson's trade talks another chance. Assuming the identity of Sports Illustrated writer Darryl Lattimore, Burlane, who seems to be taking his moves from Ross Thomas's playbook, pretends to be writing an article on Japanese baseball in order to get close enough to Kobayashi (who just happens to own the Yokohama Bay Stars) to administer the coup de grÉce—slicing off one last Kobayashi digit for the way he mismanages his team. Deliriously xenophobic, irresistibly enjoyable.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-85553-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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