A hard-pressed female cop battles criminals in and out of the NYPD in this latest of Leuci’s savvy police dramas (The Snitch, 1997, etc.). When the Chief of Detectives gives his lead investigator a job to do, she does it, no questions asked. That doesn’t mean questions don’t occur to Captain Nora Ritter. Dispatch a senior officer to check out a loan shark? Something doesn’t add up. Pretty soon, though, the pieces begin to fit together. It’s love, Nora learns, top-brass style. Blaze Longo, the loan shark, has been leaning on small-time gambler Alfred Nieri, who just happens to be the dad of Roseann Palumbo, who just happens to be the Chief’s main squeeze. Roseann wants the loan shark to leave daddy alone, and what Roseann wants, Roseann gets—hence Captain Nora’s trip to the mean streets of Brooklyn’s Red Hook District. But Blaze Longo isn’t just a loan shark; he’s an authentic sociopath. He cuts off ears, for instance, for the simple joy of it and has a portable collection of his trophies available for instant display. Moreover, there’s a scam he’s running with his sociopathic opposite number—a veteran cop, much decorated, but every bit Longo’s match in savagery. For the sake of her career, not to mention her very survival, Nora has to smash this unholy alliance. To help in the task, she forms her own alliance with Nick Ossman, an unemployed actor who’s known Blaze since they were Red Hook kids. Ad hoc and a little desperate, it’s a pairing that turns out to be surprisingly effective, paying off with a personal bonus as well. Leuci’s Nick and Nora are as far from Dashiell Hammett’s as grit is from wit. Still, his duo here has undeniable appeal, strong enough to drive this inelegant but compelling novel.
Pub Date: Nov. 9, 1999
ISBN: 0-380-97625-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2000
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
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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