Oklahoma City trial lawyer Mitchell builds on a 1973 uprising at a Sooner state prison in his flawed but bleakly effective first novel. Carriage-trade attorney Eric Williams welcomes his appointment to the pardon and parole board of an unnamed Plains state not only as a form of professional recognition but also as a distraction from painful divorce proceedings. As the vaguely liberal young advocate prepares for his initial hearing at McHenry Penitentiary, the overcrowded institution's inmates are laying careful plans for a breakout. In the meantime, with an election looming, Governor David Horton and his prospective challengers maneuver for political advantage on the issue of prison reform's high cost. In his official capacity, Eric encounters a host of crafty convicts, more than a few of whom convince him that they're ready to return to the outside world. Warning that most candidates for release will never adjust to civilized society, however, the board's older hands temper the new boy's penchant for clemency. The cynics are proved right when an inner circle of cons ignites a deadly and destructive riot to provide cover for an escape. In the confusion, Eric and fellow civilians are taken hostage. As television cameras focus on the hellish disturbances in the besieged prison's yard, he's led outside the walls through a long-forgotten tunnel behind the subterranean chamber that houses McHenry's electric chair. Eventually, Eric winds up in chains in a backwoods cabin with a band of homicidal fugitives who mean him no good. Then, freed by an unsentimental lawman who understands the criminal mind, the ex- idealist quits his post and lights out for Colorado's mountains to come to terms with the traumatic experience. While Mitchell delivers a full measure of gritty detail on life behind bars, he stumbles with a surfeit of set-piece preachments (on redemption, recidivism, rehabilitation, etc.) and finally veers off course into didactic melodrama at the close.
Pub Date: April 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-8061-2917-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Univ. of Oklahoma
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1997
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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
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