Hopbridge Chief Inspector Nick Trevellyan's first solo outing- -his live-in sometime detective partner Alison Hope (Hope Will Answer, 1993, etc.) hovers on the fringe—is a dark departure from the badinage of his earlier ventures. The obvious (but not the only) reason is the case he's investigating: a kiddie-porn bust that turns even uglier when middleman Arturo Bottone, who has smilingly denied that he's been selling his photos to anybody but a few close friends he can't name right now—is found hanged the morning after he'd been freed on bail. Nick, alone in his belief that the hanging is murder, calls on both Bottone's widow, Laura, and Deborah Tyson, the newly estranged wife of the insurance salesman caught buying Bottone's photos. Laura's focused and surviving along with her four daughters; Deborah's strung out and close to a breakdown in the wake of an onslaught of vicious phone threats and arson. Nick also renews a friendship with his old flame, Lucy Fielding, recently rescued from postpartum blues by a charming London photographer who wants to set her infant daughter up as a model. The three women form a study in different ways of coping; yet Nick's friendship with all three doesn't forestall a downbeat ending that leaves him with ``a worthless list of names; a stab in the back from a supposed friend; a real friend guilty of murder, but inviolable; [and a con man] free to move on to his next victim.'' A deceptively quiet setup, a stunning climax, and an all-too- plausible harvest of ashes in Kelly's strongest novel yet.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-684-19649-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1994
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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