The formulaic plot has room for two surprises, one of them a honey; the dewy-eyed characters, all earnest proponents of The...
A fledgling Boston lawyer quits her white-shoe firm for the real world, which here bears an uncanny resemblance to a network TV pilot.
Sitting on a park bench wondering what she's going to do about the dressing-down she's just gotten from the head of litigation, Mairead O'Clare is befriended by scruffy veteran attorney Sheldon Gold, who offers to let her an office in his place and throw some work her way. And bang! she's out of the gate on her first criminal case, the murder of homeless Zoran Draskovic, the self-styled "Old Man River" who was beaten to death on the bank of the Charles with a shillelagh belonging to Shel's pro bono client, who calls himself Alpha. Pseudonymous Devane, being a bit of a sentimentalist, makes Mairead an orphan raised by nuns and Shel a kindly older feller who does his best to cope with the wife who's been institutionalized after leaving their son in his stroller for just a minute and returning to find him gone; Shel's investigator, ex-cop Pontifico ("the Pope") Murizzi, refuses to work for any clients unless he's convinced they're innocent; and Alpha, when Mairead visits him in the jail she has to ask directions to, is calm, well-spoken, and a-twinkle with Irish charm. Refusing to cop a plea to a crime he didn't commit or, at first, to take part in his own defense, Alpha later tells the good souls turning over likely leads (a wealthy environmentalist whose boat Alpha had thrown stones at, a construction company he may have stolen building materials from, some college kids who once beat him up) that all will be revealed when he takes the stand, and eventually, he does.
The formulaic plot has room for two surprises, one of them a honey; the dewy-eyed characters, all earnest proponents of The Law As It Ought To Be, are less surprising than Perry Mason.Pub Date: April 2, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-14717-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
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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