by Robert W. Kelley with Carlos Harrison ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
A well-written and engrossing tale of a real-life legal battle.
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A debut novel offers the true account of a wrongful death suit filed against General Motors concerning a lethal car accident in the early 1990s.
Tragedy strikes the vacationing Murphys when they are visiting relatives in Virginia. While the family is stopped at a tollbooth in an Oldsmobile Cutlass Cruiser, a runaway trailer hits the station wagon’s bumper. The minor impact is enough to puncture the unprotected gas tank, which engulfs the vehicle in flames. Mike and Catherine Murphy and their daughter, Katie, as well as Mike’s cousin Jane Reilly are all severely burned. But Jane’s 21-year-old niece, Nancy Harris, and 13-year-old Matt Murphy do not survive. The Murphys then seek help from attorney Kelley in their home state of Florida. He files suit against GM, but it is a trial he watches later on Court TV that gives him direction. That trial involves a wrongful death suit against the car company and includes testimony from former GM engineer Ronald Elwell. He essentially claims that the company knew of faulty fuel tanks (in this case, a truck) and covered it up. GM subsequently backs the imposition of a gag order against Elwell, but Kelley is determined to prove the Oldsmobile likewise lacked an adequately shielded fuel tank. What follows are years of GM representatives evading answers in depositions and the company refusing to provide requested documentation. Kelley is convinced one item in particular will prove that GM implemented a value analysis, which weighed the cost of adding the gas-tank shields against the expense of individual deaths resulting from fuel-fed fires. The novel, which Kelley wrote with Harrison, tells a riveting true story. Though the narrative predominantly relays facts from Kelley’s perspective, it still has flair. For example, it opens with the accident in Virginia, a harrowing description that the attorney derives from the family’s and fellow motorists’ eyewitness accounts. Unsurprisingly, GM comes across as the story’s villain. The tale sometimes depicts GM reps in an unflattering light, like the in-house lawyer who’s “blathering away on the witness stand” or the individual who’s “mousy-looking” with “small, dark eyes.” But GM’s actions are dubious on their own, like the company’s obvious stall tactics (for example, just prior to the deadline for requested drawings and blueprints, GM sends Kelley over 30,000 documents). The work adds a bit of anticipation for readers by teasing the titular memorandum, a damning piece of evidence that marks a turning point in the case. Even if readers foresee the document’s contents, the lawyer’s attempts to get his hands on it involve a rousing fight. But there’s humor as well: Kelley equates GM’s evasive responses with trying to retrieve answers from a 5-year-old child (“Did you eat the cookies?” “Cookies?”). The prose is smart but unadorned, and the story clearly explains uncommon legal terms, such as duces tecum, that most readers won’t likely know. Though the bulk of the book is the ongoing case, the attorney provides a glimpse into his personal life, including his divorce and an early introduction to John Uustal, his eventual law partner.
A well-written and engrossing tale of a real-life legal battle.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-947779-14-3
Page Count: 254
Publisher: Sutton Hart Press, llc
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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
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