A sinewy thriller that's no doubt a kickoff—a steel-toed one- -to a new NYPD series by Solomita, whose Stanley Moodrow novels (A Piece of the Action, 1992, etc.) have lost a little edge. Like Moodrow, the much younger Roland ``Mean Mister'' Means, who's Cherokee-Irish, plays fast and loose with his detective's badge—a useful trait when going up against the vicious serial killer dubbed ``King Thong.'' Though Solomita has Means narrate his first case in industrial-strength tough-guy prose, he interweaves the cop's story with chapters told in the third-person, graphically detailing the kidnapping and sexual enslavement of a blind woman by a male assailant, ``Daddy,'' and his flighty partner, Becky. It's only after Means has been rescued from a desk job (punishment for Dirty Harry-like antics) by ambitious black captain Vanessa Bouton that it becomes clear to readers that Daddy and King Thong (so-called for his fetishistic treatment of his victims), who's shredded seven gay men in Manhattan, are one and the same. Contrary to prevailing NYPD wisdom, Bouton thinks that King Thong killed six victims to cover up the seventh killing, which was for money, and that he's otherwise a crazed killer of women—and that Means is the man to track him down. Narrowing down suspects by tearing through the NYPD underworld Ö la Moodrow, Means, with an awestruck Bouton in tow, narrows in on one Robert Kennedy, who lives upstate in the same region where Means, an abused child who turned into a master hunter, grew up—and from whom the kidnapped woman is presently escaping by smashing Becky's skull. Matters resolve in a tense hunt in the woods, with plenty of gore spattering the leaves and grass. Brisk, manly fare whose leather-hearted hero deserves an encore—as does the still venerable Moodrow.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1993
ISBN: 1-883402-03-4
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1993
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
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