American boy technowhiz and stunt aviator meets Soviet girl technowhiz and stunt aviatrix, and they exchange political, technical, and physical intimacies while the world prepares to go to war. White also wrote The Flight from Winter's Shadow (1991). Saddam Hussein is amassing his forces on the Kuwait border but foolish American policies seem unaware. Funding for Wyn Gallagher's piece of Star Wars, an incredibly intelligent optical target acquisition device, dries up, and Wyn is left with nothing to do but practice his stunt flying—until he crashes his plane and can't even practice. Out of the blue comes a private sector offer to send him with a fat check to Moscow, where the Russians have begun to take orders for their hot new stunt plane, the best in the world. Wyn's only duty in exchange for the price of the plane is to slip an envelope to rival stunt artist and inventor Elena Pasvalys, who, he is told, is ready to defect. Dr. Pasvalys has invented a diamond coating that, when paired with Wyn's gun sight, would make it possible to shoot down missiles from space. And, as it happens, there is a missile about to go off. The Iraqis have hidden nuclear weapons in the Libyan desert, and they are dying to try them out. After Dr. Pasvalys and Wyn Gallagher have a cute-meet in a midair collision, Wyn finds that his case manager has been less than truthful: Dr. Pasvalys has no intentions of leaving the USSR. Alas for her, her case manager, an old-line Leninist KGB type, is as shifty as Gallagher's, and he has her pegged for a traitor. Confusions compound until the flyers are driven to flee everybody and sort things out for themselves. Not bad. Technoweenies can be romantic after all.
Pub Date: March 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-517-57809-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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