An unlikely pair of cops forced into premature retirement team up against the hit men assigned to kill one of them, in NYPD specialist Daley's most serious dip yet into mainstream waters. Jack Dilger knows that rules are made to be broken. So when he goes after crooked art dealer Herbert Bulfinch, he doesn't let departmental regs, or the New York penal code, stop him from installing illegal wiretaps, tracing the links between Bulfinch and his latest client, aspiring collector/Colombian druglord Jorge Zaragon, or crashing Bulfinch's meeting with Zaragon and his kid brother Victoriano without a warrant. The result is a bloody shootout, done to a turn by Daley (Wall of Brass, 1994, etc.) that leaves two cops dead and our sullied hero on life support, with his higher-ups almost as mad as Victoriano Zaragon. Meantime, on the Riviera, financial inspector Madeleine Leclerq has been equally diligent and equally foolhardy in pursuing a money-laundering scam whose tentacles reach high up into the Nice local government. The more evidence Madeleine and her partners gather, the lower their stars sink on the horizon, and when in her frustration she talks out of school to a Paris Match reporter, she's exiled to a meaningless job with the Youth Brigade and given the gate by her live-in lawyer. All this background intrigue, which fills half the book, merely sets the stage for an extended High Noon finale, as Victoriano, under indictment and with Dilger the only surviving witness, comes after him—first via variously inept proxies, then in person— just as he's caught the eye of Madeleine. There'll be time for a decorative survey of the Mediterranean before the agreeably sardonic ending. Fleet and absorbing, though paradoxically more modest than some of Daley's genre pieces. Victoriano's presence turns out to be lucky for the characters, since without him they'd be denuded of the suspense situations that give them what substance they have.
Pub Date: Oct. 25, 1996
ISBN: 0-446-52063-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1996
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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