A sober, unsensational "inside" account of the Orlando Letelier case, co-authored by the federal prosecutor who handled it from the day when the Chilean ex-diplomat and an assistant were killed by a car bomb in the middle of Washington, D.C. The title is apt. Sorting out the facts and running down leads (many of them bogus) took prosecutor Propper and a few determined FBI agents into a murky network of espionage and international terrorism, involving several bands of anti-Castro Cubans and the fight-wing Chile government's notorious secret police (DINA). Almost from the start, suspicion of involvement in the mechanics of the killing fell on members of a New Jersey-based Cuban exile group, and the guiding hand seemed to have been DINA's. But tying it all together took a year and a half. The key to the puzzle: a mysterious "blond Chilean"—named Juan Williams, or Kenneth Enyart, or Andres Wilson—who kept popping up at significant times. "Williams" turned out to be Michael Townley, an American-born high-level DINA assassin who specialized in state-of-the-art bombs and dabbled in biological weapons. Though the Chileans stonewalled and the international-relations bureaucracy cranked slowly, Propper Finally extradited Townley to the US where (reluctantly) the feds traded a ten-year sentence for his testimony against two Cuban exile defendants. Unfortunate footnotes: the Cuban defendants were ultimately acquitted at a second trial, two other implicated Cubans vanished, and the government imposed only wrist-slap sanctions on Chile. While Dinges and Landau's Assassination on Embassy Row (1980) covers the facts of the case ably and is stronger on the intricacies of Chilean politics, Propper and Branch provide more background on Townley (from interviews), and answer Dinges and Landau's lingering question (why did it take so long to crack the case?) with an unsettling, behind-the-scenes look at the lack of cooperation among U.S. government agencies that slowed the investigation and threatened at times to stymie it. Exhaustively researched, well-written, and spooky.
Pub Date: April 9, 1982
ISBN: 0140066837
Page Count: 660
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1982
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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