A study in decay, showing what happens when an apparently nice girl is forced to confront her own vice: by the author of Forrest Gump (1986), etc. Johnny Lightfoot, like many a small-town boy made good, can never really find his ease among the great and the good of high society. Raised in North Carolina, Johnny became a newspaper reporter and did very well for himself in New York before moving on to even greater success as a Hollywood screenwriter. In New York, he had an brief but intense love affair with TV newscaster Delia Jameson. But Delia was married, and Johnny had to step aside when she went back to her husband. Now, years later, Johnny runs into Delia again and learns that she’s being stalked. Someone from Delia’s past has been sending her letters, threatening to blackmail her with compromising videotapes. Who can it be? Well, obviously it’s someone Delia slept with—more than once’since he knows a great deal about her sexual tastes. She asks Johnny to help, and (since he has a reporter’s nose for crime) he agrees to take on the case. This involves, first of all, tracking down every one of Delia’s old flames—a pretty long list, mostly from the Social Register. That’s no surprise to Johnny, but he quickly discovers that practically all of these guys would like to kill Delia, most with good reason. She apparently went through men the way a drunk goes through liquor, leaving a trail of broken marriages, careers, and hearts in her wake. Since the motive’s unclear, then, Johnny’s forced to concentrate on hard evidence—in this case, a particularly rare videotape that arrives in one of the blackmail letters. It leads (of course) to a surprising source, thereby emphasizing the lesson of the whole investigation: You can never be too sure about someone. Pleasantly thoughtless, told with wit and without pretense. (Author tour)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-375-50161-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
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
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