Tired of battling US anti-drug authorities on Colombian soil, the druglords hatch an ingenious, improbable, yet prophetic scheme: They'll hire a cadre of terrorists to execute NYPD officers at random, spreading fear and demoralization in preparation for an all-out attack on a high-profile public institution—all in order to frighten federal authorities into backing off their demands for extraditions from Colombia. Commissioner Thomas Cassidy, looking for a few good men to battle the Pu§o Blanco (White Fist), chooses Deputy Inspector Dan Morgan, who's joined by DEA agent Donal Castillo (``pushing the envelope and close to burnout'') and FBI antiterrorist specialist Christine Liberti. As Morgan's tiny, secret unit begins to gather information, the Pu§o Blanco—headed by paramilitary sharpshooter Lyle Petry— plants a bomb outside One Police Plaza, killing the eager-beaver officer who picks it up thinking it's a dud; executes a second officer as she's sitting in her car writing out a parking citation; and begins to place bogus distress calls to 911 in order to bushwhack the responding officers. The department, even though they haven't been told that a terrorist organization has targeted their ranks, predictably demands automatic weapons and doubled backup personnel, and then, after another bombing in the South Bronx, starts a job action. The odds against Morgan and Co. would seem impossible except for an undercover cop they've planted right under Petry's nose—but a rookie whose inexperience sets the stage for a nailbiting finale. The excruciatingly familiar characters, from coldly trigger-happy Petry to hotly trigger-happy Castillo, are only pegs to hang the action on—but as Grant showed in Line of Duty (1991), he sure can dish up the action. The recent bombing of the World Trade Center (not, by the way, the climactic target here) gives this crackerjack story an added timeliness.
Pub Date: July 9, 1993
ISBN: 0-385-41968-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1993
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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