Brainy and brawny NSA agent Bill Lane, who almost single- handedly prevented a Russo-American war in old pro Flannery's Winner Take All (1994), does another star turn in foiling a dastardly plot to destabilize the already volatile Mideast. When Frances Shipley (a comely SIS operative seconded to a UN peacekeeping mission) receives satellite photos documenting a hit- and-run raid on a secret Iranian naval base, she shares the news with Lane (a former lover). Aware that the Islamic theocracy has acquired four submarines from Moscow, the quick-witted G-man concludes that die-hard disciples of Saddam Hussein have penetrated the coastal installation to determine whether the subs have atomic weaponry. The US President fears the worst, and Lane is off to inspect the sub pens for himself. Betrayed by someone high in the American government, he's taken prisoner by SAVAK, but not before learning that the Iranians have entered into an unholy alliance with Ukraine. Freed on the strength of an upper-echelon promise that he'll assassinate the ousted but ever-dangerous Saddam, Lane next tangles with a villainous Kiev agent named Valeri Yernin. Yernin goes on to hijack a sub on a shakedown cruise in the Persian Gulf, and sinks a Saudi patrol boat. While this action brings Saudi Arabia to the brink of war with Iran, Yernin has an even grander scheme: to lay nuclear waste to Israel as well as to America's Eastern seaboard and place the blame on Tehran. Before he can launch the deadly missiles, however, Lane and a crew of SEALs from the Sixth Fleet stop him cold. Escaping once again, Yernin visits Kuwait long enough to kidnap Shipley and spirit her to Saddam's desert hideaway. The resilient Lane tracks him down once more. He manages to rescue Shipley, expose an American traitor, and kill the erstwhile Iraqi strongman, but Yernin makes yet another successful getaway. . . . A wild-and-woolly romp that should delight fans of Flannery's apocalyptic thrillers.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-312-85256-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1996
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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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