Modern economic scheming versus provincial loyalty makes for an endearing thriller.
A colorful cast of characters unites to stop one of their own from exploiting a small New England town’s land and water.
Brock Saunders is a blight on the community of Bridgeville, Connecticut. After ripping off the town’s farmers with a Ponzi scheme, he moved into the shadows, helping to facilitate the construction of an eyesore fuel-cell site and working as a consultant for the “New England Council Consortium,” an organization out to monetize the land at the expense of its people. Peter Russo knows well what it’s like to run afoul of Brock. Not only did he rob Peter’s brother and father, but he also raped his dear friend Nancy, an assault she has never gotten over. Though still quite active in his 50s, Peter will have to look to his friends, family, and fellow townsfolk for aid as a conspiracy by Brock and the consortium to sell the area’s water rights to the huge company Eautopia is slowly uncovered, a plot that the group is willing to kill to protect. Despite the high stakes of Fischer’s debut thriller, the book is often quite lighthearted. Peter’s “revenge” on Brock includes merely planting flowers around the ugly power station, and he’s aided in his fight with colorful characters ranging from a part-time private investigator and yoga-obsessed British ex-police officer to an obnoxiously loud ambulance chaser of a lawyer. Peter’s other allies are fully drawn individuals dealing with many of the modern challenges familiar to small communities; his niece, Rachel, is attempting to stay clean after opioid addiction; his ex Carmen, whom he still holds a torch for, lost her daughter to similar challenges; and most of the community suffers under a bureaucratic kleptocracy that isn’t answerable to its neighbors. Chapters are short but never rushed, and the dialogue is natural and funny, slang-filled and prone to friendly swearing and good-natured insults between close friends. As with any small town, there’s a lot of history to cover both about the area and among the characters, but even this is introduced organically, with details left to be fleshed out later on, feeding the story’s intrigue.
Modern economic scheming versus provincial loyalty makes for an endearing thriller.Pub Date: April 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73274-347-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Green Writers Press
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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