Sprawling, spirited follow-up to The Corsican (1983)—one of the violent crime dramas that Heffernan specialized in before his lighter mystery-thrillers (Blood Rose, etc.). Here, as in The Corsican, the nearly nonstop action—which ranges from 1947 to 1990—mixes spicy Corsican gangster lore and intense spy-vs.-spy intrigue. The story opens in 1980 Marseilles, where hero Alex Moran, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) office chief, sets out to ensnare German terrorist Ernst Ludwig, a sadistic killing machine who doesn't let his Soviet protectors get in the way of his pleasures—bombing innocents and rape-mutilating young women. Alex, aided by his Corsican mobster ``uncles'' Antoine and Meme Pisani—who served Alex's CIA-honcho dad before him—gets close enough to Ludwig to wound him in the cheek and push him into a vengeful kidnapping of Alex's wife, Stephanie. To save her, Alex turns international outlaw, strong-arming the local KGB chief for help—an act that doesn't save Stephanie from Ludwig's sadistic wrath but does force Alex into long exile at the Pisani's Corsica stronghold. Cut to a long flashback set in 1947, detailing how the Pisanis rose to power with the help of Alex's father, who in turn used them to control Red agitators in Marseilles. Cut to 1990, with Alex an unhappy teacher of English at a small New England college- -until Ludwig reappears in Europe and the CIA calls on Alex to take his best shot. Middle-aged Alex undergoes rigorous Special Forces retraining, then heads to Europe for a drawn-out but consistently exciting manhunt that brings him head-to-head against not only Ludwig but his father as well—and the devil's deal for power and fortune he made 43 years before. Busy, bloody, generally gripping—and tougher than a barrel of Corleones, though not nearly as clever.
Pub Date: Aug. 13, 1992
ISBN: 0-525-93465-0
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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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