Passable entertainment; could have been much better.
Investigating her father’s mysterious death in post-WW2 Cairo, a young woman finds herself on the trail of the Lost (Gnostic) Gospels; there is also a flickering love interest in this second novel from Malarkey (An Obvious Enchantment, 2000).
Gemma Bastian is a nurse in London. She lost her mother in the Blitz; then her father, an archaeologist, left for Egypt. Now it’s 1947, and Gemma is off to Cairo herself; her father has died of a heart attack, and she will stay with his friends. David Lazar is an Englishman; his second wife is Egyptian; his children are half-brothers. There’s Michael (a morphine addict, drowning in self-pity because of his injuries as a fighter pilot) and Anthony (another archaeologist, calm, aloof); Gemma will spar and flirt with the still-sexy Michael while she pushes Anthony for information on her father’s research. He had achieved a breakthrough and was expecting money before being found dead in his office after his client, a British Museum official, was killed by a rock slide. It smells bad. Who is the ginger-haired guy she surprises in her father’s office? Why is he following her? And why is Anthony stonewalling? Gemma is her father’s daughter, a smart, fearless loner, and realizes her father had unearthed one of the Lost Gospels (as a young man, he had left the seminary after a similar discovery). Sinister machinations by the Catholic church; the elevation of Mary Magdalene—yes, there are some similarities to The Da Vinci Code here. But Malarkey assures us that her many gospel quotations are authentic (and credits The Gnostic Gospels, by Elaine Pagels). Her mix of shattering scriptural revelations and skullduggery should be combustible, but the fire never catches. The murders (four, at least) generate little excitement (this is Egypt; stuff happens) and the sheer number of different gospels in circulation becomes confusing. All this, and the bombing of Cairo by the Israelis? It’s way too much.
Passable entertainment; could have been much better.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2006
ISBN: 1-59448-919-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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