Former Reagan Administration assistant secretary of defense for international security Perle presents a policy-driven thriller- Ö-clef about State Department perfidy and the valiant, dedicated, selfless assistant secretary of defense for international security in the administration of a nameless but eerily familiar 3x5 card- flipping President who battles to save the nation from the aforementioned perfidy and from anyone in either hemisphere who would threaten the Strategic Defense Initiative. You thought the Soviets were mean and treacherous, but that's just because you don't know the real threat to peace, stability, and the balance of power—those oily, stupidly trusting, cynical WASPs who run the State Department. They're really bad. Beltway insiders are sure to be left gasping by the devastating portrait of Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Dan Bennet, a totally unprincipled Princetonian who uses his old college roommate, now a liberal Stanford professor, as a back-channel to the Soviets in order to undermine the hard-hitting, coldly realistic, and increasingly successful SDI-dependent foreign policy espoused by ultradedicated Assistant Secretary of Defense, talented amateur cook, and neglectful husband Michael Waterman. How lucky the President, the Secretary of Defense, and, well, the country are to have Waterman, who stays working late at the Pentagon night after night to craft a defense policy based on reason and fact rather than Liberal Sentiment. But Waterman is about to face his greatest battle. After dreaming up a stunningly simple but immensely powerful course of action to take in the area of intermediate-range European-based missiles, he realizes that all his wonderful work is about to go down the tubes, sabotaged by the hateful Assistant Secretary Bennet, who has his own plan to give the Soviets the nuclear candy-store just for the sake of a silly treaty. Bennet and Waterman go toe-to-toe as the President and the General Secretary do the summit thing.... All the breezy charm and subtle thrills of a Nixon memoir.
Pub Date: June 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-394-56552-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
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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