A short novel that tells a formidable story in a small package, even if it sprints through some of the typical thriller’s...
In Clark’s debut thriller, the U.S. president and various experts scramble to stop Muslim terrorists from detonating a nuclear device in New York.
The red phone has become a mere Cold War relic in the Oval Office, so the president is surprised when it starts ringing. On the other end of the line is a man claiming to be the leader of the Salafis, an Islamic faction, and he has a list of demands. If the U.S. doesn’t remove military forces from Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, he says, his group will remotely detonate a nuclear bomb in the basement of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The president informs as many people as he can, including the Cabinet, without inciting public panic. As they work at cracking the code on a lock that’s securing the device, they also search for the Salafis’ location—but time is quickly running out. Clark generates a suspenseful story in minimal space—it’s well under 100 pages long—by keeping the bulk of the action inside the Oval Office. There are frequent discussions of hypotheticals, but their repetitive nature is effective: The question of whether to inform the public of the bomb, for example, results in endless debate and serves as a constant reminder of the president’s seemingly impossible task. Meanwhile, the Salafi leader’s repeated insistence that they aren’t “madmen” only highlights their desperation. The story’s minimal description focuses the story on the disastrous consequences if the terrorists are successful. Its miniscule length doesn’t leave much room for character development, but that’s no problem with such interesting characters as Timothy McIntosh, an eccentric, code-breaking Scotsman who absurdly insists on always having a bottle of Scotch at hand. However, the widowed president’s relationship with Washington Post reporter Joyce Ramirez is disappointingly brief.
A short novel that tells a formidable story in a small package, even if it sprints through some of the typical thriller’s finer points.Pub Date: June 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1490586816
Page Count: 74
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 5, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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