Fast and unrestrained, a perilous journey worth taking.
In Richer’s action-packed debut, two men in Mexico try to flee the country after stumbling across suitcases filled with cash.
John and Michael, two friends and assistant university professors at work on their dissertations, travel deep into the Mexican jungle looking for a link between the San Andreas Fault and earthquakes. Desperate in their final year of funding, the men see an opportunity in a crashed plane stowing American money, with the assumption that they’re stealing from drug runners. Unsurprisingly, the criminals want their money back, too. The short novel throws readers into the plot just a few pages in and doesn’t let up. Fortunately, John and Michael prove to be dynamic, believable characters making rational decisions and missteps in their increasingly dangerous predicament. Despite the novel’s swift pace, several lucid passages vividly detail the smells and sounds of the jungle, its many inhabitants and the colorful streets of Mexico. A welcome dash of humor, particularly from John and his typically misguided plans, counterbalances the exhausting barrage of hurdles the men must overcome if they want to make it out of Mexico alive and wealthy. Richer also infuses the story with amusing touches of wit, like the men frequently dreaming of their wealth before it’s theirs, a prison well known for its exceptional menu and a Mexican lawyer named Nacho. The ending is slightly disappointing, primarily because it comes too soon. “No one said getting rich was going to be easy,” John says—they learn the hard way.
Fast and unrestrained, a perilous journey worth taking.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2011
ISBN: 978-1463702212
Page Count: 158
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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