The veteran thriller writer's third tale featuring the honorable sniper Bob Lee Swagger (Point of Impact, 1992; Dirty White Boys, 1994). This time out, Swagger has to be coaxed into the fray by a young journalist, Russ Pewtie, who wants to write a book about Swagger's father, Earl, a western Arkansas highway patrolman killed in the line of duty in 1955. Russ's own father is a heroic trooper; there are certain parallels between a case his father handled and the way the elder Swagger died that Russ wants to explore. Bob Swagger has never quite confronted the facts surrounding his own father's murder, but Russ is the impetus he needs, and the two hit the road for the town of Blue Eye. Soon enough, it develops that someone doesn't want the two men snooping. They're nearly ambushed by ten professional gunmen on a forlorn mountain road, but Bob, being very good at his business, turns the tables. The bloody climax is cat-and-mouse stuff using state-of-the-art, heat-seeking nightscopes (the black light of the title), and Hunter ekes out every milligram of suspense, holding back his secrets until the last few pages. The best character here is an old lawyer, Sam, who's simultaneously in mad pursuit of the truth and forgetful of what he's doing. Hunter also has a nice touch depicting race relations in southwest Arkansas—he does not, much to his credit, try to impose modern views on Bob and Russ's fathers or their contemporaries. When Russ does library research, Hunter not only gets the procedure wrong but tries to make the utterly routine seem dangerous and complex, like something from Mission: Impossible. But, overall, the author is compulsively readable: His weapons scenes work, and so does his cliffhanger structure. (Literary Guild main selection; author tour)
Pub Date: May 20, 1996
ISBN: 0-385-48042-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1996
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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