Ever have one of those days when a little bitty error snowballs into big trouble? Willett's first legal suspenser traces the fallout from an $839 million typo. In only eight days, the Boston law firm of Freer Motley has succeeded in rushing through New York financier Sidney Weiner's leveraged buyout of Idlewild Industries, the lion's share of the financing to be secured by an $840 million mortgage on Idlewild Tower. Shortly after the deal is done, though, somebody discovers that the principal amount on the mortgage has been changed to $840 thousand—an unobtrusive error all the lawyers on the buyout were too dazed by paperwork to catch, and one likely to leave the partners in Freer Motley a hefty $140 million out of pocket. Whodunit? The obvious suspects are John Shepard, the brilliant, irascible architect of the deal, who's just resigned from the firm over his failure to make partner, and senior partner Samuel Whitaker, bitter over being eased into retirement. New partner Ed Mulcahy, the in-house litigator pressed into service to investigate the slip, figures things couldn't get much blacker for Freer Motley—until Whitaker is shot to death and Shepard arrested for his murder. As if that weren't bad enough, Shepard calls in an old debt by insisting that Mulcahy defend him. (Some of these complications provide interesting new wrinkles before and after the case goes to trial; some of them just produce lumps.) It looks as if the case will turn on the missing George Creel, the legless computer whiz from Freer Motley. But why is it that when Creel is finally found, he refuses to talk until he's on the stand? Like his criminally inexperienced hero, Willett still has a bit to learn about this line of work. Most of his legal types are too realistic to be very engaging. The over-obvious culprit and an over-ingenious surprise ending don't help.
Pub Date: June 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-44852-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1996
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
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
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