A photographer with a military past leads a search through Switzerland for a brilliant, spectacularly vile terrorist—in a gory but consistently clever thriller. The villain in this flamboyant first novel is the brilliant, illegitimate son of a senior CIA official and a Cuban woman; he operates under several identities but is known to his hunters as ``The Hangman.'' Photographer Hugo Fitzduane, current occupant of his family's ancient Irish castle, has his first run-in with The Hangman when he bumps into a Swiss college student...who's swaying from the end of a rope in a gloomy copse on Fitzduane's island. The boy had been studying at a college for rich brats, and his death is the first of three at the school where extracurricular activities appear to run to the occult. Offended and intrigued, Fitzduane detaches himself from the charms and skills of his thoroughly liberated news anchorette girlfriend and, after consulting with his old Irish Ranger pals, flies off to Bern, Switzerland, to find out how the dead lad could have become suicidal and just what is the meaning of the letter A and the geraniums on his discreet little tattoo. Fitzduane is a severe shock to the Swiss system. Everywhere he goes accidents happen, bullets fly, bodies drop, and blood flows. The patience of the police is sorely tested, but Fitzduane's swashbuckling investigation begins to pin down the location and a few of the identities of The Hangman, who is busy executing his latest, greatest scheme—which he hopes will make him the richest psychotic sadistic homosexual international terrorist in the business (after which he plans to retire). Everything comes to a head back in Ireland, where Fitzduane's castle proves its worth as a fortress after all these centuries. Freewheeling gore, sex, and violence presented skillfully and with plenty of good humor. Switzerland can be expected to sue.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-8021-1431-8
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1991
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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