An intelligent, thought-provoking adventure story and a fine debut.
A tense debut action-thriller that hinges on a pair of related kidnappings.
At the start of Jacobs’ taut novel, Tsarina “Tsara” Abrams lives comfortably in the New England suburbs with her husband, David Adelman, and their two kids, Abbie and Josh. One day, she receives an engraved invitation from her uncle, businessman Castle Thornlocke, to attend a charity fundraiser at the palatial Thornlocke estate in Libertyville, N.H. The fundraiser is for a worthy cause, a cancer center, and Tsara’s brother Court has also been invited. Their relationship with their uncle has always been tense and adversarial, but it seems that Uncle Cass’ new wife, Alicia, has mellowed him somewhat, and Tsara believes that his invitation might be an attempt to mend fences. She makes the trip to the New Hampshire mountains, and at first, all seems well—but her first night under her uncle’s roof, she’s kidnapped by two men and brought to a remote cabin in the woods. They explain that her uncle is holding one of the kidnappers’ children hostage (along with half a dozen others’) in his estate’s wine cellar in order to coerce them into paying outstanding debts. Her uncle, it seems, is a ruthless power broker, with the corrupt local police entirely at his disposal, and Tsara’s desperate kidnappers see no alternative but to threaten him using similar methods. Jacobs presents the ensuing tense moral and tactical standoff with smooth skill and intense readability. Her sense of the New Hampshire landscape is vividly atmospheric (“The sky was azure, wisped with occasional brushes of clouds, and the trees were rocket bursts of fall color”), and her characters are refreshingly three-dimensional; by the end, Jacobs even makes a monstrous villain such as Thornlocke understandable, if not sympathetic. The novel is fast-paced right from the end of the first chapter, and the dialogue is crisply believable throughout. Fans of mystery writers such as Lisa Scottoline and William Kent Krueger will find much to entertain them here.
An intelligent, thought-provoking adventure story and a fine debut.Pub Date: June 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0615805597
Page Count: 406
Publisher: Linden Tree Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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