The death of aggressively self-made entrepreneur Sam Yones's much-loved older son Matt, who'd been his father's gofer for years, is followed by a grand jury investigation of Sam's sharp investment practices—in this big, unfocused, breast-beating orgy from the author of Something in Common (1985). Ambitious Miami US Attorney Spencer Pelchek's investigation, focusing on Sam's Cayman Islands tax-dodge accounts, actually threatens much more, since the ownership and trusteeship of those accounts drags in not only Sam's longtime partners Mike Ankers and Gordy Wiser but his dull, doggedly faithful older son Billy, his shiksa wife Liz, whose first loyalty is really to Mike—she'd loved him years before but finally settled for Sam—and Mike's sharp live-in Cheryl Stone, who could be pressured to testify against him because they're not married (and who therefore has to be brought under Sam's watchful eye to push papers as a consultant). As Spencer and his even more predatory boss, Byron Varner, close in for the kill—putting Mike up on the stand to testify, asking him probing questions about his knowledge of the Cayman accounts and then allowing him to wriggle off the hook, offering him immunity in return for dishing the dirt on Sam—and as the revelations begin to thicken—Cheryl finds out that Sam has sent Billy to the Caymans to backdate a $1.8 million deposit in an account listed to Mike, and the law informs Sam that Matt's death in a car crash was actually a hit meant for him—the characters, except for sweating, honorable Mike, start to recede in a haze of bromides (``You never get to the top floor. No one knows where the top floor is'') until they matter even less than their knee-jerk anxieties (anguish about betraying a 40-year friendship, memories of Passover Seders, shiksa-bashing). As business melodramas go, this overblown opus has the words but not the music. Even the sure-fire courtroom material falls flat.
Pub Date: June 3, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-74425-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1992
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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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