In this Grishamesque legal procedural set in sunny, nouveau riche Naples, Florida, paranoid but good-looking former Miami Beach prosecutor John Geddy, who made a name for himself prosecuting serial killers, can't seem to leave criminal law behind. Credit former lawyer Foley with finding an arcane (if compelling) bit of legalese as an excuse to set the plot in motion. It seems that estate law requires that the duration of some trust funds be pegged to the lifespan of existing human beings. A trust fund must self-destruct 21 years after the last of the so-called ``measuring lives'' die. It's no wonder that Foley's lights-on- nobody's-home lawyer hero, now awkwardly in private practice with a white-shoe law firm, ties Naples' notorious ``new moon slasher'' murders, which occurred nearly 21 years ago, to the coming dissolution of the $30 million Gentry family trust fund. Geddy is hired by flaky, fabulously face-lifted Cynthia Dole, one of the trust's beneficiaries, to make sure she gets what's coming to her. Lurking in the background is another beneficiary, decadent, spendthrift Curtis Dole, who just might have had a motive to murder those ``measuring lives'' two decades ago. Geddy, and his hardworking associate lawyer, Faith Williams, hire Nick Farley, a sleazy freelance journalist and specialist in serial killers, to get the goods on Curtis. During the inevitable courtroom confrontation, which is as predictable here as the tortured twists in plot, Gentry is able to brand Curtis a liar and murderer, thus succeeding in disqualifying him as a beneficiary. Flush with victory, Gentry discovers that there were more corpses and, possibly, more serial killers involved than he thought. Newcomer Foley's bilious loathing of the tasteless rich and his climactic series of hokey, gratuitous James Bondish chases in (of all places) the Swiss Alps doesn't save a tricked-up lawyer fantasy that, while no worse than generic Grisham, is no better.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1996
ISBN: 1-56980-091-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Barricade
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
