A Los Angeles police detective brings his tough-guy attitude home—with tragic results—in an overly dramatic debut novel by Idaho writer Gannon. Daniel Kane's career as an L.A. cop has taught him to run a tight ship at home—lining up his four kids and barking out the orders for the day before taking off for work each morning, then meting out punishment when those chores aren't done. As a result, the Kane kids, ranging from 18-year-old Tommy to Nate, the youngest at nine, look forward eagerly to growing old enough to leave home- -despite the fact that home is an idyllic beachfront Santa Monica Bay bungalow that their cellist mother, Catheryn, inherited from her mother. This particular summer, Tommy's last before entering the University of Arizona on a football scholarship, Kane has arranged for a construction job for his two older boys and has ordered Catheryn to forgo an offer to play with the Philharmonic in order to keep an eye on the younger two. Second son Travis, a prodigy on the piano, and only daughter Allison, a budding writer, chafe the most against the insensitivity and discipline of a father who considers their artistic temperaments ``sissy''—and they're predictably the ones who suffer the most as all four Kane kids' acts of rebellion lead them closer and closer to danger. Still, even as tragedy looms, it's hard to condemn this father completely, whose strict example has instilled self-discipline and strength in his children—even when only three survive to profit by it. A somber modern melodrama whose well-drawn, convincing characters are occasionally sabotaged by a TV-movie tendency toward easy moralizing.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-553-10164-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1996
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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