THERE'S A MAN WITH A GUN OVER THERE

Name: THERE'S A MAN WITH A GUN OVER THERE
Author: R.M. Ryan
ISBN: 978-1-57962-385-2

by R.M. Ryan ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 31, 2015

A novel that tries to marry the internal conflict of Tim O'Brien to the novelist style of Nelson DeMille but can’t quite...

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A Vietnam-era veteran recalls his childhood, leading up to a defining moment as a military policeman in Germany.

It's hard to tell whether author Ryan (Vaudeville in the Dark, 2010, etc.) is playing fast and loose with the truth in his sort-of war memoir. Ultimately, veracity doesn’t matter much for a story in which nothing much happens. The launch is intriguing—military policeman Rick Ryan is being threatened by soldiers loyal to Staff Sgt. Elija Perkins, who's been arrested by Ryan and his partner for bootlegging cigarettes. There's also the tease of a fatal denouement: “And then it hit me: what kind of a story did I have to tell? I’d never been in real combat, though maybe I’d killed someone.” From there, it’s a lot of flashbacks to a relatively idyllic childhood in Janesville, Wisconsin, and the occasional flash forward to a peaceful adulthood in the present day. Mostly it tells how Ryan got from Wisconsin to Germany, working his assignments while the Baader-Meinhof gang carries out their ultraviolence nearby. After consulting with draft resisters and failing to mutilate himself to get out of the war, Ryan enlists. He's trained as a military policeman and deployed in Germany under a diverse rogue’s gallery of commanders. Weird side note: He talks to Albert Speer in his dreams. The married but unfaithful Ryan also takes a lover who threatens him with retribution from her Baader-Meinhof friends, which kicks off that murky ending we mentioned earlier. The book’s difficulty comes in wanting to have it both ways, leaving it unconvincing as a thriller yet lacking the emotional depth to qualify as a cautionary tale.

A novel that tries to marry the internal conflict of Tim O'Brien to the novelist style of Nelson DeMille but can’t quite stick the landing.

Pub Date: March 31, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-57962-385-2

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Permanent Press

Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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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.