Confident, readable and pleasingly busy entertainment, flavored with a dash of disenchantment.
In war-scarred London as the Allies prepare to invade Europe, an intrepid American female investigator tackles low crime in high places.
Mrazek (Unholy Fire, 2003, etc.) tells a dark, meaty story, ripely cast with members of the U.S. top brass and the British upper crust. The novel floats, and occasionally flounders, on an ocean of detail evoking the sights, smells and mood of an exhausted nation during a grinding war. His improbable protagonist, 25-year-old Jewish forensic genius Liza Marantz, is not only gorgeous but heroic too, having survived a torpedoing in the Atlantic en route to England. Seconded to Major Sam Taggart, a maverick ex-cop now in military security, her job is to safeguard the Allies’ two big secrets: the cracking of the ULTRA code and the launch details of Operation Overlord. When two female colleagues die in suspicious circumstances, Liza and Sam begin to unravel a plot involving bluebloods and senior American officers, in particular General Kilgore, who supplies steaks, whisky and women to the high command. When their investigations penetrate too close to home, the general has Sam removed from the case. Liza goes dancing at the Savoy with scarred Battle of Britain hero Lord Nicholas Ainsley, who invites her to a lavish weekend party at his country estate, Rawcliff. Fellow weekenders include Liza’s code-cracking pal, Charlie Wainwright, and his menacing Irish friend, Des Sullivan; another murder brings Sam dashing to Rawcliff, too. Ainsley, forced to turn traitor because he is bankrupt, and Des, a Nazi spy, kidnap Charlie, intending to fly him to Europe and extract his secrets. Events move at a satisfying clip toward a grand finale that again dunks our heroine into the sea, clinging to an aircraft fuselage along with Charlie and a villain with a prosthetic leg and a romantic soul.
Confident, readable and pleasingly busy entertainment, flavored with a dash of disenchantment.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2006
ISBN: 0-670-03478-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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