A legal slugfest over control of a Microsoftish firm puts the heat on all interested parties, including the presiding judge and his bride. Jordan Crandell, sharklike head of Summit, Inc., wants to reach across America to buy nerdy Eric Lynch's Cinderella corporation Starware, Inc. So does Crandell's equally ruthless competitor Lew Valentine. Crandell nails down the first meeting with Lynch and the first offer; Valentine counterattacks by offering more money and insinuating that Crandell's financing is shaky. When Lynch, who's harbored a grudge against Valentine for 20 years, accepts Crandell's tender offer, Valentine's hired gun, Bernard Odette, a takeover expert dubbed the Michigan Assassin, sues Summit and Starware, filing an injunction to halt the offer. Although Paul Murray, a rookie federal judge hungry for experience and publicity, is delighted when he's assigned to hear the case, he'd be sleeping a lot less soundly if he knew that (1) Crandell secretly put him forward for the federal bench as a wedding present to his wealthy society wife, Hope; (2) Crandell's now hired a private eye to dig up any dirt that could be used to blackmail Murray; and (3) half a billion of the dollars Crandell's put up for Starware have been sneaked out of Hope Murray's trust fund by her impecunious uncle. So Murray has every reason to rule in Crandell's favor. Wonder what will happen if he doesn't? Unlike most of Coughlin's crudely effective courtroom thrillers (In the Presence of Enemies, 1993, etc.), this posthumous novel offers little in the way of courtrooms or thrills; it's a soapy saga in which you end up rooting for the judge but wish all the charmless litigants would lose. (First printing of 125,000; $125,000 ad/promo)
Pub Date: Feb. 4, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-11534-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1994
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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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