A flaw-filled thriller that’s left coyly open-ended.
A terrorist faction executes a diabolical attack upon the United States, and only rogue ex-CIA agent Marc Bishop can stop them.
Considered treasonous with a federally mandated bounty on his head, Bishop has been lying low since his days on the Gamma Tea, but when his houseboat suddenly explodes, he knows someone has found him. Marc quickly reassembles his old team, which is soon entangled in a sinister terrorist plot. A criminal mastermind named “The Saint” has developed a computer program that would cripple world markets and bring U.S. commerce to a standstill. Now living in a world deeply rooted in fear, people find their ATM cards useless and have no way to access their accounts. Gamma Team must swiftly–and with violent abandon–untangle the web of secrets and deceit leading to The Saint. Gratuitous missile launching and copious cat-and-mouse chases pepper this frenetic potboiler. This testosterone-laced machismo buffet has something for every Y-chromosome action fan: hot babes, big guns and more explosions than a Die Hard flick. Bishop, a Dirty Harry-esque paragon of masculine virility, has no qualms in taking whatever action necessary to bring the enemy down. Unfortunately, the bountiful errors in style, grammar and usage become overwhelming to the point of comedy. In a particularly tense scene, Bishop ruminates over the demise of the American economy and people’s fear, and how “they were responding with adrenalin-heightened emotions, not a clam level head.” Bonam shows promise in his scenes of the terror attacks, capturing with pitch-perfect accuracy the American people’s panic. These scenes, probably the best in the work, are terse and few, and could have been further expounded to provide readers with a more visceral appeal, rather than the shoot-’em-up, blow-’em-up tack employed.
A flaw-filled thriller that’s left coyly open-ended.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2008
ISBN: 978-1439217283
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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