Implausibilities, stock types, plodding courtroom drama: a disappointing return.
Habitual overwriting and plot devices that defy credibility ruin the scattered pleasures of this political/courtroom thriller by the usually dependable Bunn (Closing Costs, 1990, etc.).
While researching labor practices in the Guangzho Province of China, Gloria Hall, a student at Georgetown, is arrested. Not only is she beaten, but she’s forced to work in the notorious Factory 101. Bunn writes this, unfortunately, without even acknowledging the possibility that a US citizen might be missed, causing an international incident that would drive CNN wild. Moreover, when Gloria is forced to read a televised statement, the direness of her situation—and she’s obviously under duress—seems to stir only her parents, Austin and Alma Hall, of North Carolina. They hire the near-catatonically depressed attorney Marcus Glenwood, who’s suffering from the guilt and trauma of an auto accident that killed his two children, while his wife and her wealthy family have hired his former colleagues at Knowles, Barbour and Bradshaw to handle the ensuing divorce. But Marcus’s archenemies Logan Kendall, who replaced him, and Suzie Rikkers, whom Marcus once tried to have fired, are the least of his problems. New Horizons, the multinational sports equipment conglomerate that owns Factory 101, is based in North Carolina. The conglomerate, too, hires Logan and the gang to battle the hapless Marcus. On his side are an elderly church deacon, his secretary Netty, and the bad-tempered, contentious Kirsten Stanstead, Gloria’s roommate at Georgetown. In a preposterous scene à la TV-movie, Marcus drops by New Horizons headquarters for the first time; he tries to ask a few questions; they respond, immediately, by trying to kill him, smashing his Blazer with pickup trucks. He doesn’t bother to go to the cops; that, natch, would do no good.
Implausibilities, stock types, plodding courtroom drama: a disappointing return.Pub Date: June 20, 2000
ISBN: 0-385-49615-X
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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