Ducking missiles and evading MIGs, America's only Stealth bomber prototype sneaks into the Soviet Union to destroy the supercomputer-controlled radar system that threatens the world's balance of power—in Rizzi's first technothriller. It's eight or so years ago, and everything's the way it used to be—a golden age for technoterror when the Soviet Union was still the Evil Empire and America was still spending big bucks on technogear. Here, the superpowers are getting ready to sign a major strategic weapons agreement, but the Soviets are, of course, cheating. Using stolen Western computer technology, they have put together a radar system capable of using the entire frequency spectrum to track and outthink any invading aircraft. The free world's bomber force is instantly useless. Well, almost useless. Fortunately for free peoples everywhere, America's military industrial complex has been working on a supersecret technogizmo of its own. The prototypes of the Stealth bombers that were not to have been airborne for another six or eight years are already up and running. A defecting Soviet fighter pilot brings the news of the naughty radar to the Air Force, and, over the objections of the ever-wimpish State Department, the CIA and the military send their supposedly nonexistent radar-invisible superplane to Moscow to take out the pesky gadget. The Stealthy crew includes the Soviet defector, who knows that he'll be facing some very irritable ex- associates. And you thought the cold war collapsed over economics. Harrowing flight scenes aren't quite enough to compensate for turgid technospeak and an incredibly decisive and gutsy president figure. Stealthy plot takes too many direct hits from real-life events.
Pub Date: May 28, 1992
ISBN: 1-55611-290-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1992
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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