Spruill (My Soul to Take, 1994, etc.) has a grip on the medical suspense/horror novel far firmer than Robin Cook's. This time out, he sets up what could be the really well-done kickoff novel of a series about hungry hemophages (bloodeaters). Dr. Katie O'Keefe, a hematologist, must crack the resistance of a fantastic new strain of red blood cells to all forms of attack. Some biter-madman in D.C. is ripping open women's throats and leaving drained bodies in churches, beginning with the National Cathedral. Pooled in the ear of his first victim is the killer's own fresh blood—blood that doesn't dry or clot. The medical examiner sees this non-drying blood as beyond his expertise and calls in Katie to run tests for him. Then more fresh blood turns up on later victims—blood that will not die! Detective Merrick Chapman, Katie's ex-lover, knows very well who the killer is: his own son, Zane, whom Merrick hasn't seen in 400 years. Both are hemophages—and Merrick himself is over 900 years old, although he looks only 30 what with his superblood. Centuries ago, though, Merrick gave up murdering victims, learned to drain out enough blood to survive while putting victims in a trance, and began tracking down and imprisoning in an underground vault all the hemophages he could find. But Zane, who has outwitted his father so far, at last plans to meet him face to face and kill him. Meanwhile, Zane discovers that Jenny, a 12-year-old leukemia victim dying under Katie's care, is actually his own daughter—and he saves her life by feeding her blood orally. Now Merrick must kill his own son—and granddaughter as well—if he is to wipe out the scourge. But he has his own young son, Gregory, with Katie, and Zane's threats on Katie and Gregory bring on a Mexican standoff with his father. Terrific plotting—fresh indeed—and the hospital background shines in a seemingly unresolvable love story about a man who has already outlived 16 wives and 43 children.
Pub Date: July 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-13163-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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