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
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
BOOK REVIEW
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