Following the assassination of an American military attachÇ in the former USSR, the Pentagon sends Marcinko on a priority (Designation Gold) mission to Moscow with orders to investigate the brutal murder. A sometime Navy SEAL (whose real-life exploits in Vietnam were chronicled in the 1992 bestseller Rogue Warrior), Marcinko has had an active (if fictive) post-retirement career in which he offers caustic first-person accounts of dirty jobs done for low-profile agencies of the US government (Rogue Warrior: Task Force Blue, 1996, etc.). On this outing, the salty soldier of fortune raises enough homicidal hell with mafiya goons and corrupt officials to get himself expelled from Russia. Although scarcely more welcome in Washington's upper echelons, he has come away with evidence that minions of the Kremlin are smuggling nuclear material to Syria through Werner Lantos, a shady Hungarian middleman who works out of Paris. Joining forces with Avi Ben Gal (an old pal from Israel's security service), Tricky Dick heads for the City of Light, where he and his three-man team learn that the venal go-between is at the heart of a vast conspiracy to restore the erstwhile Soviet Union's superpower status and trigger a renewal of the Cold War. While well-placed traitors in their own governments resist them at every turn, Dick and Avi resourcefully manage to mount an airborne raid on a covert atomic-weapons installation near Damascus. In a climactic engagement notable for their unwonted reliance on guile as well as firepower, the two lay waste to the secret ordnance facility, bag the reptilian Lantos, and determine who should pay for the transnational plot's near-miss horrors. With sociopolitical asides (on Bill Clinton, equal employment opportunity in the armed forces, and allied targets of opportunity) as hard-hitting as the narrative action, the aging but perdurably macho man delivers another diverting road show. (Author tour)
Pub Date: March 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-671-89673-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1997
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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
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