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
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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