First novel set in a revolution-ridden South American country much like Peru. The publisher suggests a hint of Graham Greene here, a likeness that is hard on Slone. Chapters ooze at us from revolving points of view and make this a slow-moving, thickly textured story, a pace not distant from The Honorary Consul or The Human Factor— but there the likeness ends. Bobby Shafto, an American cook at Blacky's none-too-fancy restaurant, is really a photographer. One night Blacky tells him that he has a special job for him: to go into the hills and photograph never-before-photographed revolutionary leader Roberto Gavilan. Months back, the government set up an assassination of Gavilan that failed to go off—but the government announced its success anyway. Gavilan wants this lie rebutted by photographs to be released to the press. This huge scoop will get Bobby Shafto back on his feet as a news photographer—if he's successful. However, he falls for Nina de Bettancourt, his temporary model and the ravishing young mistress of cocaine-trafficking Colonel Rinaldi, whose elite unit is out to destroy Gavilan's Santo Moreno revolutionaries. Nina, once engaged to Rinaldi's son Alejandro, who was blown up (apparently by Rinaldi), wants to escape from her futureless tie with Rinaldi. It's bad news that Nina accompanies Bobby into the hills to find Gavilan. In fact, Rinaldi is aware of their moves and shows up in a helicopter to take them off to his wife's ranch for lunch—along with Gavilan (!), who is incognito. Knowing Gavilan has no serious number of troops, Rinaldi plays his victories over the revolution for print and prestige. Then he devises a massacre of the insurgents.... Bobby is such a boor that his spiritual rebirth via Nina is barely measurable. But Slone's eye for native life and the Peruvian countryside is first-rate, practically H********esque.
Pub Date: July 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-679-40093-1
Page Count: 340
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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