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HOSTAGES

Name: HOSTAGES
Author: Terrence Crimmins
ISBN: 978-1490307435

CAPTIVES OF A MIDDLE EASTERN TERRORIST AND INTERNATIONAL INTRIGUE.

by Terrence Crimmins ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 3, 2013

A fair thriller but an excellent satire of American media.

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Crimmins’ debut thriller follows two men who survive a hostage crisis and later endure unremitting media attention as they attempt to capture a terrorist.

When recent Georgetown University graduate Tom O’Malley fills in for his boss to deliver pizza one night, it proves a fateful decision. He happens upon a group of Uzi-toting Muslim terrorists, led by a man named André Abdul, who have taken several State Department employees captive—and they add Tom to the hostage tally. He makes it out alive, but authorities remain concerned that Abdul, who escaped police, may still be in the United States. So Tom and a fellow survivor, Chilean translator Amado Salpedro, go on a publicity tour, hoping that the public’s sustained interest will help ensnare the terrorist leader. The novel becomes invested in the aftermath of Tom and Amado’s captivity, and follows them as they make the rounds on talk shows. The novel makes its boldest statements in its depictions of the media; for example, Tom and Amado begin an interview by responding to questions about their traumatic experience and end up, in a woeful but comical scene, sitting through a tacky song and music video loosely based on the incident. Tom’s back story pales in comparison to Amado’s; the Chilean immigrant, unable to find success in America, has grown to resent privileged people like Tom. Even Abdul, whose family’s estate was destroyed in Beirut, comes across as a more riveting character than Tom does. That said, Tom’s solid relationship with his girlfriend, Amy, gives him a semblance of maturity, although it’s often offset by his irresponsibility and naïveté. His conversations include stories of partying with his rugby team; at one point, he has to have the term “chop shop” explained to him, and, at another, guesses at Los Angeles’ nickname (“I think they call it L.A.”). The novel also doesn’t provide very much suspense—readers are told the exact date of another terrorist plot in the works—but the bad guys are appropriately and convincingly menacing when they finally show up.

A fair thriller but an excellent satire of American media.

Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2013

ISBN: 978-1490307435

Page Count: 350

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2013

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

by Anthony Burgess & edited by Mark Rawlinson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 8, 1962

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The previous books of this author (Devil of a State, 1962; The Right to an Answer, 1961) had valid points of satire, some humor, and a contemporary view, but here the picture is all out—from a time in the future to an argot that makes such demands on the reader that no one could care less after the first two pages.

If anyone geta beyond that—this is the first person story of Alex, a teen-age hoodlum, who, in step with his times, viddies himself and the world around him without a care for law, decency, honesty; whose autobiographical language has droogies to follow his orders, wallow in his hate and murder moods, accents the vonof human hole products. Betrayed by his dictatorial demands by a policing of his violence, he is committed when an old lady dies after an attack; he kills again in prison; he submits to a new method that will destroy his criminal impulses; blameless, he is returned to a world that visits immediate retribution on him; he is, when an accidental propulsion to death does not destroy him, foisted upon society once more in his original state of sin.

What happens to Alex is terrible but it is worse for the reader.

Pub Date: Jan. 8, 1962

ISBN: 0393928098

Page Count: 357

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1962

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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by Anthony Burgess

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EVA LUNA

by Isabel Allende ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 21, 1988

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Here, after last year's Of Love and Shadows, the tale of a quirky young woman's rise to influence in an unnamed South American country—with a delightful cast of exotic characters, but without the sure-handed plotting and leisurely grace of Allende's first—and best—book, The House of the Spirits (1985). When little Eva Luna's mother dies, the imaginative child is hired out to a string of eccentric families. During one of her periodic bouts of rebellion, she runs away and makes friends with Huberto Naranjo, a slick little street-kid. Years later, when she's in another bind, he finds her a place to stay in the red-light district—with a cheerful madame, La Senora, whose best friend is Melesio, a transvestite cabaret star. Everything's cozy until a new police sergeant takes over the district and disrupts the accepted system of corruption. Melesio drafts a protesting petition and is packed off to prison, and Eva's out on the street. She meets Riad Halabi, a kind Arab merchant with a cleft lip, who takes pity on her and whisks her away to the backwater village of Agua Santa. There, Eva keeps her savior's sulky wife Zulema company. Zulema commits suicide after a failed extramarital romance, and the previously loyal visitors begin to whisper about the relationship between Riad Halabi and Eva. So Eva departs for the capital—where she meets up with Melesio (now known as Mimi), begins an affair with Huberto Naranjo (now a famous rebel leader), and becomes casually involved in the revolutionary movement. Brimming with hothouse color, amply displayed in Allende's mellifluous prose, but the riot of character and incident here is surface effect; and the action—the mishaps of Eva—is toothless and vague. Lively entertainment, then, with little resonance.