One priceless lot to be sold at a closed auction, six high-rolling bidders, one million nefarious dodges: a second adventure for antique dealer Kay Williams (The Time of the Cricket, 1995). The prize is a Bowie knife reputed to have belonged to Jim Bowie himself, taken from his body at the Alamo and preserved by the same Mexican family for over 150 years. New Orleans oilman Billy Boy Watkins, determined to make “Old Bowie” the prize of his knife collection, is paying Kay big bucks to act as his agent. But she’s up against some stiff competition. Although Secret Service counterfeiting investigator Roy Scanner can’t be counted a serious competitor, catty San Francisco antiquer Melanie Wadsworth, wealthy Long Island collector Arthur Ward, Japanese insurance mogul Kazuo Goto, and Leon Donin, from Moscow’s Koska Museum, are all as determined as Billy Boy to own the fabled weapon. And some aren’t very fussy about the tactics they—ll use to narrow the field of bidders. Donin’s gone so far as to hire as his bodyguard Bud Wolf, a homegrown hit man, who has designs on the knife himself, and Kay’s impecunious ex, Phil, has turned up in Austin with his thuggish Jamaican partner to grab whatever spare cash he can find lying around. All the bidders have different weaknesses—the counterfeiting subplot is especially well-turned—and except for Kay they’re all willing to use sex or intimidation or violence or whatever else works to bully or trick each other into retiring from the fray. By introducing and killing off subsidiary characters, Blankenship manages, ingeniously and often miraculously, to bring his story to a boil while keeping all six bidders alive for the auction (though a shootout goes on a mite too long), but it wouldn’t pay to sell any insurance once the bidding starts. Nimble variations on a predictable suspense formula. Few readers will be fooled by the wiles of the treacherous knife-hunters, but most will get their money’s worth, which is more than you can say of the characters.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998
ISBN: 1-55611-548-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1998
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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