Rebounding from last year's lackluster foray into Queens (Forced Entry), Stanley Moodrow returns to his colorful home turf of the Lower East Side (A Twist of the Knife, Force of Nature) for an exciting crime melodrama that pits the aging cop-turned- p.i. against a diabolical drug-dealer and his super-addictive designer drug, PURE. Always a smart stylist, Solomita expands his writerly horizons here by presenting the story from three primary points of view: that of Moodrow and of black lowlife Wendell Bogard, each told in the third person; and that of criminal mastermind Davis Craddock, told in the first person through his ongoing ``Autobiography.'' Although Moodrow's talewhich begins as romance-novel queen Connie Alamare hires him to get Craddock for overdosing her daughter and kidnapping her grandsonremains the focus, Craddock's memoirs prove the novel's chilling core as the white middle-class sociopathic genius reveals his devolution from an abused kid into the sexually depraved and homicidal false messiah of a Lower East Side-based psychotherapeutic cult, the Hanoverians, which recently has provided cover for dealing PURE, a heroin-coke combo more addictive than crack. Meanwhile, Wendell Bogard, hired by Craddock as his link to the black underworld, offers an ultrahip window on the action that provides much dark and tangy humor. As Moodrow homes in on Craddockwith the help of series regulars Betty Haluka, his lawyer girlfriend, and Jim Tilley, his old cop-partnerPURE-users start to turn up dead: the drug mutates lethally when heated, or smoked. Craddock runs, but not before snatching Betty, who in order to save Connie Alamare's grandsonrevealed as Craddock's sonhas tried to penetrate the Hanoverians incognito; wild with anger and fear, Moodrow kills Bogard, then tracks down Craddock for a bloody showdown. Strong, swift, and sure, but lacking the pervasive humanity and poetry of the streets that made Force of Nature (1989) a crime-thriller classic.
Pub Date: May 31, 1991
ISBN: 0-399-13593-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1991
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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