An engrossing legal tale woven with impressive intelligence.
A courtroom thriller dramatizes the battle between journalistic freedom and protections against libel.
Eddie Bennison’s rise from obscurity to fame as a professional golfer is as late as it is meteoric. Failing to make his high school team, he didn’t play seriously until he was in his 30s and working as a salesman for a container company. By the time he decided to make a career out of the sport, he was on the other side of 50 years old and eligible to play on the Senior PGA Golf Tour. But his first two seasons are as remarkable as his early life is inauspicious—he wins more than a dozen tournaments in two years, collecting millions in prize earnings and endorsements. Both his career and his reputation are threatened, though, when the leading golf magazine, Tee Time, runs a series of articles discussing rumors of Bennison’s reliance on performance-enhancing drugs and unfair tinkering with his golf clubs. As a result, he loses major endorsements, and the psychological strain of public mortification kills his game. Jacklin (Jacklin: My Autobiography, 2007, etc.) and Yastrow (Vision to Legacy, 2013, etc.) devote most of the novel to Bennison’s lawsuit for defamation against Tee Time and its publisher, brilliantly conducted by his lawyer, Charlie Mayfield, a man as talented as he is intimidating. But Mayfield has to contend with an unpleasant surprise—a woman accuses Bennison of sexually assaulting and beating her, testimony that could wreak havoc on the golfer’s popular appeal as a sports hero and “stereotypical” matinee idol. The authors thoughtfully raise and wrestle with several serious issues: the legitimacy of performance-enhancing drugs in a professional sports world increasingly dominated by technology; the tension between a robust interpretation of the First Amendment and the damage done by recklessly sensationalist media; and the possibility that an accusation of a sexual crime is mendaciously driven by ulterior motives. Impressively, all of these matters are treated with delicacy and nuance, and none of them are considered at the expense of the tale’s dramatic power. The authors push the plot forward relentlessly, and the courtroom contest—especially Mayfield’s blistering interrogation of the reporter, Max Reed, who wrote the articles about Bennison—is captivating. In fact, the attorney becomes the most compelling character in the book—deviously smart but morally principled, he makes the case a referendum on journalistic malfeasance, encouraging the jury to make an example of Tee Time the industry can’t afford to ignore: “What amount of punitive damages would get their attention? What amount would they take seriously, and not shrug off as a nuisance?” If there’s one fictional failing, it’s the characterization of Reed. He’s too easy a target for Mayfield—the reporter’s boss calls him the “biggest boob since Humpty Dumpty”—since he’s astonishingly unprofessional, morally wayward, and easily disoriented under cross-examination. The lawyer’s gifts would shine even brighter if used against a more formidable opponent.
An engrossing legal tale woven with impressive intelligence.Pub Date: May 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68401-602-0
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Mascot Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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