Strong characterizations uplift a somewhat old-school SF/medical thriller.
In Cerrano’s debut novel, a girl with an incredible scientific secret seeks help from a skeptical security expert.
In New York City, a homeless young woman who goes by the nickname “Colors” tries to keep out of sight of surveillance cameras and pursuers. She attempts to purchase no-questions-asked protection from security expert and retired Army colonel Sam Hennessy. He initially doesn’t believe her paranoid accounts of being hunted for the world-shattering information she possesses, even after she gives him a fortune in cash. But other people’s deaths and his own encounter with a hail of gunfire change his mind. In other chapters, the plot goes back 12 months to the St. Louis household of retired professor Helen Merrick and her distant, workaholic husband, Joseph, a Greek-mythology buff and research scientist who’s so engrossed in a clandestine “Athena Project” that he largely ignores his own family. He even seems unconcerned with the fact that a young daughter, away in Africa, appears to have been abducted. Helen gets Joseph’s attention, however, when she announces that she has stage 4 uterine cancer. In the present-day storyline, Colors stubbornly refuses to reveal anything concrete about herself, her background, or her dilemma, so it’s a minor puzzle how the two plotlines fit together, but it’s one that won’t be too taxing for even casual SF fans. Cerrano’s novel should appeal to aficionados of Robin Cook’s medical thrillers (especially 2012’s Nano), although this book has more of an on-the-run chase narrative. The author also works hard to get into the mindsets and emotions of the desperate players, who aren’t sure whom to trust or how to protect loved ones. Cerrano’s spirit hearkens back to the days when such character-oriented SF material could be found in the fiction sections of mainstream magazines such as McCall’s.
Strong characterizations uplift a somewhat old-school SF/medical thriller.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-67372-544-5
Page Count: 390
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
