Sexual debauchery and twisted identities reign in an intricately descriptive first novel, a thriller that reads like North by Northwest re-scripted by Joe Eszterhas and Franz Kafka. When sad-sack Anderson (no first name) agrees to help a lumbering barroom loudmouth make time with a couple of luscious coeds, he can't imagine that, only hours later, he'll be fighting for his life while his double, a man named Peterson, tries to drown him. Wet, dazed, and confused after killing his look-alike assailant, Anderson struggles back to Minnesota's Twin Cities, where he discovers that everyone thinks it's Anderson who has perished. Confronted with the denial of his ``true'' identity at every turn, Anderson flees into the awkward refuge of Peterson's personality. Not that it's the worst place to hide out: a genius multimillionaire with epicurean tastes and raunchy libidinal appetites, Peterson was in the dissertation-for-hire business: For an indefinite price, he would crank out a brilliant treatise in any discipline, sell the work to some mediocre scholar, and then blackmail the new professor into providing him with investment information or access to his wife. Briefly, Anderson gets into occupying Peterson's world, which features, among other perks, a sprawling apartment (complete with a Playboy mansion bedroom, wine cellar, and Jacuzzi) and a steady diet of saucy babes. Matters become thorny, however, after Shannon—Peterson's co-conspirator and preferred sackmate—appears, claiming that Anderson is really just a deluded Peterson. Dodging repeated attacks from a mysterious motorcyclist, Anderson combats his doubts while brooding over his increased comfort with Peterson's intellectually haughty and consummately horny existence. In desperation, he tracks down one of the well-endowed coeds who was an inadvertent accomplice to his original abduction, but nothing seems to be able to derail Peterson's master plan, which gradually develops an irresistible force. An immensely readable debut jammed with odd details, elaborate fight scenes, and loads of athletic, midwestern sex.
Pub Date: March 23, 1995
ISBN: 0-385-30606-7
Page Count: 405
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
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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