Intense police melodrama, circa 1957, as Solomita takes his hulking cop-hero Stanley Moodrow (Bad to the Bone, 1991, etc.) back to his early, troubled days on the job. It may be set 25 years ago, but the elements that have made Solomita's modern-day crime thrillers so invigorating are in place: There's 6'6'' Moodrow, of course, just five years on the force but already relentless—as shown in the brutally exciting near-opening scene in which the young cop, face ravaged and nose broken, batters his way to victory in the Inter-Service Boxing Championships. There's Moodrow's beloved human ant-heap of a Lower East Side and its usual complement of skin-crawling villains, this time led by ruthlessly ambitious Jewish gangster Jake Leibowitz. And there's strong—if relatively clichÇd—human drama, sparked when an old family friend asks Moodrow to look into the slaying of a Hispanic neighbor that other cops are ignoring. Moodrow agrees but treads softly, not wanting to further alienate his future father-in-law, powerful Inspector Pat Cohan, who's just given Moodrow a gold shield but who's angered because Moodrow is balking at his new post as assistant to the precinct bagman. Moodrow's a pit bull for justice, though, and when he learns that the dead Hispanic was an innocent slain by Liebowitz's crew during a shakedown, and that Cohan (who Moodrow doesn't yet know is in the mob's pocket) has quelled the investigation, he swears to take Liebowitz down. Meanwhile, Leibowitz cuts a savage swath through the Lower East Side and the Italian bosses who have forsaken him, and Cohan swears to crush the insubordinate Moodrow, who prepares to fight back—but won't that mean losing the love of Cohan's daughter, the sweet and succulent Kate? Series fans already will know that Moodrow wins this battle, but Solomita's energetic evocation of the bad old days of New York's finest will keep them nailed to the page right up to the foregone conclusion.
Pub Date: July 17, 1992
ISBN: 0-399-13730-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1992
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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