An occasionally fun thriller, despite simplistic enemies and clunky dialogue.
In Weissmann’s debut thriller, a diving expedition for lost diamonds comes up against storms, sharks, and neo-Nazis.
Erik Hazen is a 46-year-old charter-fishing captain who docks his vessel, the Finest Kind, on the shores of Montauk, New York, on Long Island. There’s plenty of adventure (and tragedy) in his past, including exploration of the Andrea Doria wreck, said to be the Mount Everest of diving expeditions. The beautiful Laura Morgan meets him to propose a new dive to that famous, sunken ship; specifically, she wants to recover a cache of diamonds there, which her uncle had hidden away to keep it from falling into Nazi hands. Her motives are pure, however; she works for a foundation seeking to restore stolen wealth to Holocaust victims’ families. So Hazen feels compelled to act, despite his painful memories of his wife’s death on an Andrea Doria dive. He assembles his team of divers and sets out on an exploratory mission, but it turns out that a dark alliance of neo-Nazis and Palestinian terrorists are after the loot, too—and they’re armed to the teeth. Weissmann’s villains are venomously racist and laughably evil, and their presence flattens the narrative into a standard thriller scenario. However, the author manages to wring some tension out of the perilous sea voyage; there’s a great sense of foreboding, for example, when Hazen finds a rotting whale carcass, which is sure to attract great white sharks. The colorful dialogue is full of local expressions (Hazen explains that fishermen call pilot whales “blackfish,” for example), but also clichés, and there’s too much empty talk, including this bland exchange between Hazen and Morgan: “ ‘The more things change, the more they stay the same.’ ‘Yes. It was Uncle Carl’s favorite expression.’ ” It might have helped if the author had provided more of a sense of atmosphere during the dives, and deeper descriptions of the shipwrecks. That said, readers looking for a straight-ahead adventure plot may enjoy this novel with an unusual setting.
An occasionally fun thriller, despite simplistic enemies and clunky dialogue.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-1625501820
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Llumina Press
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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