Shagan, who has written screenplays (Voyage of the Damned, Save the Tiger) and thrillers (Pillars of Fire, Vendetta, etc.), puts them together in a funny, fast-moving, Hollywood insider novel about a studio stock scam. The conspirators are a tough, old syndicate boss and the top executives at one of the few studios not in the hands of foreign investors. The conspiracy is fairly simple. Backed with billions of flawlessly laundered dollars, a rapacious European investor will make a bid for the studio, offering double the current price of the stock. The executives, having loaded up on the depressed stock, will unload, netting billions. The bid will then be withdrawn. No one will be hurt—except the public and the team of filmmakers assembling in Spain to make an old-fashioned epic picture about the Spanish Civil War. In order to provide the bidder with an excuse to back out of his offer, the cynical studio head has destined the film for failure, starting with the selection of a reformed heroin addict as producer. The remaining nails in the film's coffin are a lunatic director, an ancient screenwriter, an alcoholic priapic male lead, and an old-fashioned egomaniac actor in the secondmost critical role. The plot looks like a sure thing until the conspirators realize, to their horror, that the filmmakers have all taken the pledge and begun to make a truly fabulous movie. If it all sounds a bit like The Producers, it is—but no matter. The fun is in the Hollywood office scenes, the filming, and the huge cast of amusing characters. Movie fans will find themselves dying to see the film.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-671-74132-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1992
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
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