Next book

FORTUNES OF WAR

The veteran flyboy tale-spinner (The Intruders, 1994, etc.) rewrites the near-future-war formula—with splendid results. With the high-tech thriller genre suffering from a shortage of drawing-board hardware and credible villains, it’s wonderful to find Coonts breaking free from Clancy-esque overplotting to craft an oddly optimistic war drama that’s less about the mechanics of warfare than the conflicted loyalties of the soldiers who’ll fight it. The admittedly contrived scenario involves a plan by fanatical right-wing Japanese Prime Minister (and Yukio Mishima fan) Atsuko Abe to annex oil-rich portions of Siberia by using a squadron of radar-invisible Zero fighter jets and an illicit nuclear arsenal. American President David Hood, eager to meddle but not get officially involved, sends a bunch of F-22 fighters with a crew of crackerjack flyboys to “assist” Russian President Aleksandr Kalugin, a maniac with Stalin-esque ambitions and a few nuclear warheads left over from the bad old days. Once the fighting starts, Coonts wisely shifts his story away from the heavily caricatured government leaders to an assortment of middle- to upper-level flyboys, spies, and submarine crewmen whose patriotism and stoic devotion to duty are complicated by feelings of sympathy and camaraderie with “the enemy.” They are also, to a man (and woman, a tough-as-nails fighter pilot and one of Coonts’s more memorable creations), horrified at the devastation they’re about to unleash. Superb battle scenes, in the air or under Tokyo Harbor, lead to a climactic aerial dogfight between Jack Cassidy, an emotionally vulnerable F-22 squadron commander, and his Japanese opposite number—Captain Jiro Kimura. Having trained together in the US, Kimura and Cassidy are close friends who can, if they choose, end the conflict before it leads to world destruction. A stirring examination of the courage, compassion, and profound nobility of military professionals under fire. Coonts’s best yet. ($300,000 ad/promo; author tour)

Pub Date: May 12, 1998

ISBN: 0-312-18583-9

Page Count: 368

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1998

Categories:
Next book

TRUE BETRAYALS

Thoroughbreds and Virginia blue-bloods cavort, commit murder, and fall in love in Roberts's (Hidden Riches, 1994, etc.) latest romantic thriller — this one set in the world of championship horse racing. Rich, sheltered Kelsey Byden is recovering from a recent divorce when she receives a letter from her mother, Naomi, a woman she has believed dead for over 20 years. When Kelsey confronts her genteel English professor father, though, he sheepishly confesses that, no, her mother isn't dead; throughout Kelsey's childhood, she was doing time for the murder of her lover. Kelsey meets with Naomi and not only finds her quite charming, but the owner of Three Willows, one of the most splendid horse farms in Virginia. Kelsey is further intrigued when she meets Gabe Slater, a blue-eyed gambling man who owns a neighboring horse farm; when one of Gabe's horses is mated with Naomi's, nostrils flare, flanks quiver, and the romance is on. Since both Naomi and Gabe have horses entered in the Kentucky Derby, Kelsey is soon swept into the whirlwind of the Triple Crown, in spite of her family's objections to her reconciliation with the notorious Naomi. The rivalry between the two horse farms remains friendly, but other competitors — one of them is Gabe's father, a vicious alcoholic who resents his son's success — prove less scrupulous. Bodies, horse and human, start piling up, just as Kelsey decides to investigate the murky details of her mother's crime. Is it possible she was framed? The ground is thick with no-goods, including haughty patricians, disgruntled grooms, and jockeys with tragic pasts, but despite all the distractions, the identity of the true culprit behind the mayhem — past and present — remains fairly obvious. The plot lopes rather than races to the finish. Gambling metaphors abound, and sexual doings have a distinctly equine tone. But Roberts's style has a fresh, contemporary snap that gets the story past its own worst excesses.

Pub Date: June 13, 1995

ISBN: 0-399-14059-X

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995

Categories:
Next book

FIREFLY LANE

Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...

Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.

Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?

Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008

ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3

Page Count: 496

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007

Close Quickview