Not especially funny as whimsy, no match for Animal Farm as political satire, and a mite overlong, like most speeches....
Fortified with the public-service experience he’s garnered from solving 21 mysteries among his human companions (The Big Cat Nap, 2012, etc.), Sneaky Pie Brown throws his hat into the presidential ring in a tale with no mystery and very few people.
When you think about it, it’s not so crazy after all. Cats don’t lie or take campaign donations that might warp their judgment; they’re not irresponsible or illogical; they don’t waste time on computers and cellphones; and they think about sex only when they’re in heat. Plus, Sneaky Pie lives in Virginia, that cradle of presidents. So it makes a certain amount of sense when he informs his housemates—fat gray cat Pewter, corgi Tee Tucker and Jack Russell terrier Tally—that he intends to run for president. “I want to represent us, the other citizens of America,” he tells the birds, whose support he solicits before moving on to canvass the mice at Monticello, the horses kept by his human—whom he calls C.O., for Can Opener—and the bats in her basement. Although Sneaky Pie’s odyssey ends before the election, even before he has to choose a running mate, his platform is straightforward: full salaries, medical benefits and pensions for animals in the military service; a close review of the government’s policy of reintroducing predators to landscapes that can no longer sustain both them and their prey; an end to the overpopulation and industrial pollution that threaten food and water supplies; and new initiatives aimed at promoting greater harmony among the Earth’s creatures.
Not especially funny as whimsy, no match for Animal Farm as political satire, and a mite overlong, like most speeches. You’ll have to go to Sneaky Pie’s real-life website, www.catprez.com, for the campaign slogan that makes the perfect punch line: “I can’t do any worse.”Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-345-53046-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2012
Virginia Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta (Cruel and Unusual, 1993, etc.) has given up smoking and strayed far enough from her high-pressure office to act as a consulting profiler for the FBI, but her nerves are just as frayed at Quantico, especially since her rebellious niece Lucy is a computer-whiz trainee for the Engineering Research Facility down the hall. Scarpetta's latest case is ugly even by her standards: the North Carolina sex murder of Emily Steiner, 11, whose forensics are so contradictory that Scarpetta wants to exhume her for a second autopsy. Before she can do so, North Carolina Bureau investigator Max Ferguson, returning home from Quantico, dies, apparently of autoerotic asphyxia, and his local contact winds up in the hospital with a heart attack. Scarpetta scurries to work out how and why Temple Gault, an apparent serial killer who's the leading suspect in Emily's murder, might have killed Ferguson—and what to make of her gruesome discovery in Ferguson's freezer. No sooner has she finished the grisly re-examination of Emily, than word comes from Quantico that Lucy's sneaked into an unauthorized area after hours and is getting washed out of the program. Scarpetta's two nightmares come together with a crash—a car crash that sends Lucy to the hospital and Scarpetta out to the field to run forensics on her own automobile. As always, tension is ratcheted up, rather unconvincingly, by plots whose interconnection is never quite clear and by the constant friction between Scarpetta and her niece; her sister; her FBI lover, Benton Wesley; her boorish buddy, Capt. Pete Marino; and Emily's mother, with whom Marino is having an affair. But beneath the welter of quarrels and coincidences is as insidious a study of evil as Cornwell has turned in. (Literary Guild main selection)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-684-19597-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
Although the pace of this intricate tale is necessarily slow, the investigation and its ultimate destination are gripping.
An investigation into an 11-year-old murder unearths some surprising revelations in Inspector Ian Rutledge’s 21st case (The Gate Keeper, 2018, etc.).
Rutledge survived World War I shellshocked and living with the ghostly voice of Hamish, a comrade who died in his arms. When he helps a former soldier find his wife, the grateful man gives him a tip that might help Rutledge find one of the most wanted men in Britain, Alan Barrington, who was accused of murder over a decade earlier and hasn't been seen since. Rutledge's boss gives him the unwelcome job of following up the clue, which begins the inspector's unrelenting search for the truth. Barrington had been accused of engineering a motor crash that killed Blanche Thorne and gravely injured her second husband, Harold Fletcher-Munro. Barrington had been positive that Fletcher-Munro drove Barrington’s friend Mark Thorne to financial ruin and suicide so he could marry Blanche. Rutledge starts out by investigating Barrington’s friends, including his lawyer and estate agent, both of whom have known him for years. When each refuses to confirm or deny that he’s still alive, Rutledge begins to consider the possibility that Mark Thorne did not commit suicide but was murdered by one of the several men who wanted Blanche. Conversations with friends and relatives of the parties involved with Blanche reveal many conflicting opinions. Each snippet Rutledge gleans leads him deeper into a complex maze, but he never considers giving up even when his own wartime demons come to the fore.
Although the pace of this intricate tale is necessarily slow, the investigation and its ultimate destination are gripping.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-267874-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
