A former Justice Department lawyer has written a mind-boggling medical thriller to end all medical thrillers. It may be the most outlandish, and could be the most talked about, popular fiction of the season. Word-of-mouth advocacy seems almost inevitable for this provocative first novel, which readers will find either thoroughly thought-provoking or wildly unbelievable. Either way, both camps will undoubtedly keep the pages turning, even though many will quickly figure out where things are going. Congressman Jack MacLeod, haunted by the death of his high-school sweetheart in a botched cesarean, still wonders whether a child survived that tragic event. Victoria Winters, the lovely lawyer with whom he lives, is involved in some mysterious plot with her best friend, transplant surgeon Rachel Redpath, and is further absorbed by an abortion case she is pleading before Judge Abner Titus. Titus, a committed anti-choice advocate who has just been nominated to be the new chief justice of the Supreme Court, will, if confirmed, take office in time to decide a case that will overthrow Roe v. Wade. MacLeod is his chief opponent in the Congress. Other players include a fanatical anti-abortion crusader who hates MacLeod with a passion, a mystery man with a murderous agenda, and a beautiful young reporter hot on the biggest story of her fledgling career. Toss in the mysterious series of murders in which the bodies of abortion-clinic bombers are found with their internal organs removed and a tiny plastic doll left in their stead—and things get pretty melodramatic. Rapidly paced storytelling and several surprising plot twists more than compensate for that, however. Not only does Pottinger offer a unique perspective on a significant political issue, he neatly raises the ante in the final paragraphs for an almost perfect ending to an unforgettable story. (First printing of 250,000; $250,000 ad/promo)
Pub Date: April 30, 1995
ISBN: 0-345-38400-8
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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
This large, stately, and intensely powerful new novel by the author of Terms of Endearment and The Last Picture Show is constructed around a cattle drive—an epic journey from dry, hard-drinking south Texas, where a band of retired Texas Rangers has been living idly, to the last outpost and the last days of the old, unsettled West in rough Montana. The time is the 1880s. The characters are larger than life and shimmer: Captain Woodrow Call, who leads the drive, is the American type of an unrelentingly righteous man whose values are puritanical and pioneering and whose orders, which his men inevitably follow, lead, toward the end, to their deaths; talkative Gus McCrae, Call's best friend, learned, lenient, almost magically skilled in a crisis, who is one of those who dies; Newt, the unacknowledged 17-year-old son of Captain Call's one period of self-indulgence and the inheritor of what will become a new and kinder West; and whores, drivers, misplaced sheriffs and scattered settlers, all of whom are drawn sharply, engagingly, movingly. As the rag-tag band drives the cattle 3,000 miles northward, only Call fails to learn that his quest to conquer more new territories in the West is futile—it's a quest that perishes as men are killed by natural menaces that soon will be tamed and by half-starved renegades who soon will die at the hands of those less heroic than themselves. McMurtry shows that it is a quest misplaced in history, in a landscape that is bare of buffalo but still mythic; and it is only one of McMurtry's major accomplishments that he does it without forfeiting a grain of the characters' sympathetic power or of the book's considerable suspense. This is a masterly novel. It will appeal to all lovers of fiction of the first order.
Pub Date: June 1, 1985
ISBN: 068487122X
Page Count: 872
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1985
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