The seventh volume in Griffin's masterful narrative of the US Marines in WW II's Pacific theater (Close Combat, 1992, etc.) takes his battalion-sized cast of characters behind enemy lines from the Philippines to Washington, D.C. Before Bataan and Corregidor fell, Wendell Fertig, an Army engineer unwilling to become a prisoner of war, made his way to the island of Mindanao, where he promoted himself from lieutenant colonel to brigadier general to lead a ragtag bunch of Americans and Filipinos in rearguard actions against the Japanese invaders. While Fertig's irregulars manage to establish contact with the outside world by the fall of 1942, the US high command responds cautiously (in part because General MacArthur has publicly stated that guerrilla operations are impossible in the Philippines). Unwilling to miss a potentially good bet, Navy Secretary Frank Knox picks USMC General Fleming Pickering (who heads a shadowy intelligence unit) to mount a reconnaissance run from his Australian headquarters. Apprised of the mission, the OSS wants in (to establish a presence in the Far East), and the globe-trotting leatherneck soon finds himself engaged in a succession of close encounters with civilian as well as military brass. Equal to every occasion, Pickering musters an effective landing party from veterans of the Guadalcanal campaign; its ranks encompass the gung- ho likes of Lieutenant Ken McCoy (an ex-enlisted man known as Killer) and gunnery sergeant Ernest Zimmerman (an old China hand). Ferried into Mindanao by submarine early in 1943, Pickering's band of Marine Corps brothers locates Fertig, determines he's the real thing, and makes its way back to Allied lines with their findings, albeit not before enduring narrow escapes from occupation forces and evacuating a group of fellow Americans. A welcome addition to the series, again illustrating how home- front politicking can play as important a role as firepower on certain battlegrounds.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 1996
ISBN: 0-399-14086-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1995
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
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