From ex-foreign service officer Tyler (The Lion and the Jackal, 1988, etc., etc.): an engrossing cold war drama with a big international cast of characters, and with settings ranging from Washington, D.C., to Paris and Berlin. When Kevin ``Kip'' Corkery, a junior CIA officer and former US Navy Lieutenant, is appointed ``action officer'' to investigate the sudden disappearance of one of the agency's senior career officers, Frank Dudley, he takes on the task with an active independence and fresh competence that surprise his less than forthcoming department heads and superiors. Corkery's pursuit of Dudley and of the truth about his suspect loyalties to other intelligence organizations- -those of both friend and foe, including KGB, MI5, And FBI—is complicated by the shadowy presence of Russian Major Alexi Andreyev and his own former comrades and Western contacts, as well as by the named organizations' inherent distrust of each other. The unfolding story of double and triple twists is revealed through events as experienced in turn by Dudley, Andreyev, and Corkery: ``Every conspiratorial bureaucracy views its failure as its antagonist's victory,'' suggests one narrator, ``whether the State Department in combat with the Pentagon, the Pentagon with the Office of Management and Budget, CIA with the FBI, or Washington with Moscow.'' With aplomb, the various agencies stretch their legs to chase their enemies—and their own tails. Expert and entertaining forays into the outdated mind-sets of early cold war counterintelligence—and a vintage spy story in the tradition of Greene or le CarrÇ.
Pub Date: Jan. 11, 1994
ISBN: 0-8050-2338-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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