Most of Alan’s cases are thrillers, but despite several homicides here, the leading threat facing the hero is whether he’ll...
Boulder psychotherapist Alan Gregory takes time off from a practice that includes more than its share of killers (Dry Ice, 2007, etc.) to hunt down several vanished babies and their mothers.
The morning after six campers met Estonian cafeteria cook Jaana Peet on the floor of the Grand Canyon, she disappeared from her companion, Nick Paulson, without a trace. Years later, two of the six turn up in Alan’s life courtesy of his ex-wife Merideth. A hard-charging TV newsmagazine producer, Merideth has had several miscarriages. Determined to become a mother, she’s hired Lisa, one of the campers who left the Canyon without searching for the missing Jaana, as surrogate mother to carry a child to term for Merideth and her fiancé, political consultant Eric Leffler, another of the campers who hiked out instead of looking for Jaana. Now that Lisa has gone missing from her New York apartment, Merideth insists that Alan help find her and her unborn child. Alan’s ever-complicated domestic life makes him the perfect candidate for Merideth’s plan, since he’s already in Manhattan acting as a lifeline for Jonas, the child Alan’s late friend Adrienne commended to his care. Alan can’t expect any help from his wife, Boulder ADA Lauren Crowder, who’s off in Holland seeking to trace an out-of-wedlock daughter she gave up for adoption many years before. Several of the tangled plotlines eventually bear fruit, but not nearly enough to justify their number, complexity or lack of interrelation.
Most of Alan’s cases are thrillers, but despite several homicides here, the leading threat facing the hero is whether he’ll sleep with any of the attractive women who seem determined to throw themselves at him—and whether he’ll ever be able, as therapists say, to move on with his life.Pub Date: March 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-525-96006-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2008
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
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