A well-paced, enjoyable thriller.
A secret government organization sends a terminally-ill demolitions expert to assassinate a dictator.
John Covello is in trouble. His house is about to be repossessed, he has saddled his family with millions of dollars of debt and his demolitions business, once one of the largest in the nation, has crumbled. To make matters worse, he learns that he has an aggressive pancreatic cancer that will kill him in a few short months. In short, he’s just the type of man the U.S. government needs for a super-secret program that recruits terminally-ill citizens to conduct suicide missions. Driven to desperation–insane fundamentalist Pakistani dictator Ali Khan has just detonated a nuclear bomb over India in an attempt to take control of Kashmir–the government seeks out Covello for the job: imploding the government headquarters of Pakistan while Khan and his generals meet to discuss strategy. Covello’s family will be well-compensated, but he must disappear without breathing a word of his illness or mission to anyone. The novel’s premise is implausible, but the author compensates with a brisk narrative that sends an undercover Covello into the heart of fundamentalist Pakistan, where his contact, the brilliant and gorgeous doctor Salena Zamal, is engaged against her will to Khan. Covello and Zamal have only a few days to accomplish the task–the Indian prime minister is preparing for an all-out nuclear retaliation–and the fate of the world hangs in the balance. The story isn’t exactly groundbreaking, but DeStefano’s evocation of the Pakistani landscape and skillful manipulation of the sexual, ethnic and ideological tension between Covello and Zamal serve as welcome counterpoints to the conventional plot twists.
A well-paced, enjoyable thriller.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2006
ISBN: 1-59526-064-1
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
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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