The mandarins of the new world order sure make a mistake when they pick on retired D.C. cop Eddie Nickles (Playing the Dozens, 1990), who's just trying to buy his daughter a graduation gift. To pick up a quick $10,000 toward Priscilla's Mustang, Eddie agrees to take on the case of Toddy and Helen Grehm, slain stalwarts of the Iberia Trading Company, at the behest of Grehm friend Garland Bolles. There's a clear lead the Metropolitan Police haven't followed up: a photo of a man trying to use Helen's ATM card a few hours after her murder. But when Eddie and a homeboy buddy identify the ATM thief, he swears he didn't kill any white folks. Shortly after, he's dead, and things don't look too good for Eddie, who barely manages to repel a pair of masked intruders who've obviously been sent to his house to tie off a loose end. Eddie's convalescence is enlivened by the discoveries that (1) Garland Bolles doesn't exist; (2) Iberia Trading is actually a cover for a nest of American spies, counterspies, and assorted wheeler-dealers; (3) not everybody in the tight little peninsula of Iberia and its kissing cousin, the Special Projects Directorate, gets along with everybody else (though some of them are downright matey with their Russian counterparts); (4) Helen Grehm's funeral may have been premature; and (5) this cloak-and- dagger stuff seems to have been furnished with all the paraphernalia from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (laughably innocuous front organization, unflappable security director, loose-cannon operatives enslaved by their own lusts—well, maybe it's not all out of U.N.C.L.E.). Coolly surveying the formidable array of international talent arrayed against him, Eddie takes them all on—in a cheeky, intermittently amusing little-man fantasy that tries, but fails, to do for the international espionage community what The Doorbell Rang did for the F.B.I. The Gallant Little Tailor vs. the CIA, the KGB, and the harried reader's credulity. (First printing of 75,000; $75,000 ad/promo; author tour)
Pub Date: July 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-670-85129-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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