Remarkable: hilariously nasty, morally driven, sweetly romantic. Poor Linda: Fritz is irresistible.
In an ambitious satire of post-9/11 America, the author of two previous legal thrillers (The Betrayal, 1998, etc.) manages to skewer our financial, political and social institutions with vicious glee while offering a nuanced portrait of his tragicomic hero (and supporting heroines).
Everything comes easily to handsome, laid-back Fritz Brubaker: beautiful wife, kids in private school, big house in fancy Boston suburb. Fritz cares more about skiing and sailing than about his job as Assistant Comptroller to the corporate conglomerate Playtime. But complaisance goeth before a fall. Playtime has been fudging its profit numbers and is headed for an Enron-style disaster for which no one in the company is willing to take responsibility. Fritz’s wife Linda, a high-powered, hardworking lawyer for whom nothing comes easily, has begun an affair with a fellow law partner out of exasperation with happy-go-lucky Fritz. Fritz’s spoiled son is having “issues” at his progressive private school. When a struggling stockbroker traces a short placed on Playtime to one Phineas Brubaker and sets off a selling frenzy, Fritz is arrested for insider trading. An aging Falstaffian senator, smarting over being snubbed by the President, who used to be his drinking buddy, gets wind of Playtime’s corporate shenanigans and calls for an investigation. Fritz’s testimony speeds both the senator’s and Playtime’s demise. Fritz’s own downfall and redemption (no reader will believe for a second that he committed the crime for which he serves his country-club-prison term) is set within the context of periodic flashbacks to his Econ. 101 class, where his professor devotes the semester to answering the question “What is value?” Full of moral outrage, Willett takes jabs at everything and everyone. Lawyers—Willett himself is one—and corporate CEOs get it the worst. Yet most of the human targets here are more foolish than evil. The one thoroughly unsympathetic villain is the e-mail device, the Blackberry. It gets its just reward.
Remarkable: hilariously nasty, morally driven, sweetly romantic. Poor Linda: Fritz is irresistible.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2003
ISBN: 1-4000-6086-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2003
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
