A straight-arrow midwestern flyer and a rising mafioso team up to clip the wings of a murderous Italian ace who terrorizes the skies over WW II Sicily. Co-writers Pacheco (the nonfiction Fight Doctor, 1977) and Skimin (Gray Victory, 1988; Chikara!, 1984) based the story on a real incident. Bad things have been happening to Africa-based bombers on their way back from raids over Europe: injured stragglers are mysteriously disappearing. Young Captain Josh Rawlins discovers the reason when his own limping B-17 is joined by an American Lightning fighter that turns from apparent friend to murderous foe, shooting down the bomber and then strafing all the survivors except Josh. The wolf in sheep's clothing is Franco Adamo, an Italian who spent his formative years in Boston and who now uses his flawless Yankee slang and captured airplane to lure innocent flight crews to their death. Vowing revenge for the murder of his pals, Rawlins goes AWOL and stows away on the plane inserting OSS agent Maj. Rudy ``Lotions'' Sabatini into Sicily. Peacetime mafia consigliäre Sabatini has orders to find and eliminate Adamo, who is actually the son of an enemy of Sabatini's old boss Vito Genovese. Sabatini and Rawlins chase Adamo from Sicily to Sardinia to Cairo, where Adamo's gorgeous Jewish-Italian archaeologist wife whiles away the war looking for Mrs. Tutankhamen. Guess who Rawlins falls for. There's not a tongue anywhere in cheek in this thin, Indiana Jones adventure. Too bad.
Pub Date: March 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-89141-437-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Presidio/Random
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.
Passion, friendship, heartbreak, and forgiveness ring true in Lovering's debut, the tale of a young woman's obsession with a man who's "good at being charming."
Long Island native Lucy Albright, starts her freshman year at Baird College in Southern California, intending to study English and journalism and become a travel writer. Stephen DeMarco, an upperclassman, is a political science major who plans to become a lawyer. Soon after they meet, Lucy tells Stephen an intensely personal story about the Unforgivable Thing, a betrayal that turned Lucy against her mother. Stephen pretends to listen to Lucy's painful disclosure, but all his thoughts are about her exposed black bra strap and her nipples pressing against her thin cotton T-shirt. It doesn't take Lucy long to realize Stephen's a "manipulative jerk" and she is "beyond pathetic" in her desire for him, but their lives are now intertwined. Their story takes seven years to unfold, but it's a fast-paced ride through hookups, breakups, and infidelities fueled by alcohol and cocaine and with oodles of sizzling sexual tension. "Lucy was an itch, a song stuck in your head or a movie you need to rewatch or a food you suddenly crave," Stephen says in one of his point-of-view chapters, which alternate with Lucy's. The ending is perfect, as Lucy figures out the dark secret Stephen has kept hidden and learns the difference between lustful addiction and mature love.
There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.Pub Date: June 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6964-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Back to a Jurassic Park sideshow for another immensely entertaining adventure, this fashioned from the loose ends of Crichton's 1990 bestseller. Six years after the lethal rampage that closed the primordial zoo offshore Costa Rica, there are reports of strange beasts in widely separated Central American venues. Intrigued by the rumors, Richard Levine, a brilliant but arrogant paleontologist, goes in search of what he hopes will prove a lost world. Aided by state-of- the-art equipment, Levine finds a likely Costa Rican outpostbut quickly comes to grief, having disregarded the warnings of mathematician Ian Malcolm (the sequel's only holdover character). Malcolm and engineer Doc Thorne organize a rescue mission whose ranks include mechanical whiz Eddie Carr and Sarah Harding, a biologist doing fieldwork with predatory mammals in East Africa. The party of four is unexpectedly augmented by two children, Kelly Curtis, a 13-year-old "brainer," and Arby Benton, a black computer genius, age 11. Once on the coastal island, the deliverance crew soon links up with an unchastened Levine and locates the hush-hush genetics lab complex used to stock the ill- fated Jurassic Park with triceratops, tyrannosaurs, velociraptors, etc. Meanwhile, a mad amoral scientist and his own group, in pursuit of extinct creatures for biotech experiments, have also landed on the mysterious island. As it turns out, the prehistoric fauna is hostile to outsiders, and so the good guys as well as their malefic counterparts spend considerable time running through the triple-canopy jungle in justifiable terror. The far-from-dumb brutes exact a gruesomely heavy toll before the infinitely resourceful white-hat interlopers make their final breakout. Pell-mell action and hairbreadth escapes, plus periodic commentary on the uses and abuses of science: the admirable Crichton keeps the pot boiling throughout.
Pub Date: Sept. 28, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-41946-2
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1995
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