The delayed-revenge plot provides lots of corpses but little outlet for showcasing Holland’s true strengths.
Another ambitious descent into the murky waters of crimes past and present from forensic specialist Holland.
A generation ago, an Army Status Review Board reviewed the case of Master Sergeant Jimmy Lee Tenkiller, a Choctaw supply officer missing and apparently deserted from Vietnam. The vote to pronounce the man officially dead was two to one. The dissenter, Col. Paul Fick, has always been haunted by the case for obscure reasons. Back in 1970, right around the time Jimmy Lee went AWOL, a careless mistake sent Fick, then a captain, back stateside with an injury just in time for his replacement to lead his men off to their deaths. Whether or not he was a deserter, Jimmy Lee was no innocent. As a loyal (i.e., bought and paid for) member of the Brotherhood of Five, he was funneling black-market supplies, ammunition and claymores to four officers of the South Vietnamese army and not asking too many questions about what became of the materiel—until the day he suddenly developed scruples and his life became much more interesting. What’s the connection between Jimmy Lee’s false position and Fick’s festering conscience? The question would involve nothing more pressing than ancient history if somebody hadn’t started to track down members of the Brotherhood of Five, most of them grown fat and lazy after settling in America, executed them, then scalped them. Holland calls once more on forensic anthropologist Dr. Robert (Kel) McKelvey, lab director of the Army’s Central Identification Bureau (One Drop of Blood, 2006), this time with decidedly mixed results. The constant shifts in time and place are ungainly, the dollops of service humor and service acronyms labored and the forensic revelations slow to arrive (Kel doesn’t get down to serious work until Chapter 48) and not all that revelatory.
The delayed-revenge plot provides lots of corpses but little outlet for showcasing Holland’s true strengths.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-7432-8001-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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
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