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
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.
Another surprise from an author who never writes the same novel twice.
Though Whitehead has earned considerable critical acclaim for his earlier work—in particular his debut (The Intuitionist, 1999) and its successor (John Henry Days, 2001)—he’ll likely reach a wider readership with his warmest novel to date. Funniest as well, though there have been flashes of humor throughout his writing. The author blurs the line between fiction and memoir as he recounts the coming-of-age summer of 15-year-old Benji Cooper in the family’s summer retreat of New York’s Sag Harbor. “According to the world, we were the definition of paradox: black boys with beach houses,” writes Whitehead. Caucasians are only an occasional curiosity within this idyll, and parents are mostly absent as well. Each chapter is pretty much a self-contained entity, corresponding to a rite of passage: getting the first job, negotiating the mysteries of the opposite sex. There’s an accident with a BB gun and plenty of episodes of convincing someone older to buy beer, but not much really happens during this particular summer. Yet by the end of it, Benji is well on his way to becoming Ben, and he realizes that he is a different person than when the summer started. He also realizes that this time in his life will eventually live only in memory. There might be some distinctions between Benji and Whitehead, though the novelist also spent his youthful summers in Sag Harbor and was the same age as Benji in 1985, when the novel is set. Yet the first-person narrator has the novelist’s eye for detail, craft of character development and analytical instincts for sharp social commentary.
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.Pub Date: April 28, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-385-52765-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2009
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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