From former Harlem firefighter Kasminoff, a debut suspenser about a fire marshal in Manhattan tracking down a sadistic murderer and arsonist. Something about the deep-dyed evil in recent horrors he's witnessed strikes a buried memory in Fire Marshal Matt Kincaid, who's got 20 years in the New York City Fire Department. First he finds himself investigating a series of homeless men who have been set on fire. Eddie Cannell, a young criminal, gives him the lead he needs before Eddie too winds up as a smoking pyre at the site of the old World's Fair. At the same site Matt finds a 12-year-old girl whom the arsonist has chained up, raped, and tortured for two years. As Matt spends time obsessively tracking his prey, his second partner in a row is killed and his wife leaves him. Meanwhile, the fire department receives notes from the killer, who calls himself The Sentry, telling officials not to assign Matt to the case—which The Sentry knows will ensure his eventual going one on one with Matt. Hypnosis stirs enough memories for Matt to recall his bloody encounters with a local bully during his adolescence—a bully now grown up not only to have become a landlord who buys buildings on the cheap and torches them, but also to have assembled a group of S&M slaves to do his bidding, even setting up a crucible of horror in a huge ballroom. Kasminoff's firefighting experience lends authenticity here, but it's still not credible that even the sadist would remain enticed by an unwashed child over two years in chains, swollen with sores and physically rotting. And the youthful rivalry between Matt and The Sentry re-erupting after 20 years locks the novel safely into the thriller genre rather than letting it head for the memorable mainstream work it might have been. Gripping melodrama that moves from ghastliness to ghastliness with a powerful sense of growing havoc.
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-517-59715-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
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
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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