Coming back strong from last year's ragged Probable Cause, Pearson turns in a tale of international terrorism that offers the sort of breakneck action, mature characterization, and tight forensic detail that made Undercurrents (1988) a police-procedural classic. The story opens with a literal bang as hero Cameron Daggett's FBI superior opens a booby-trapped suitcase and blows himself and Daggett's chief link to German radical environmental-terrorist Anthony Kort to kingdom come. The foul-up particularly irks Daggett because he's sure that Kort is responsible for the airplane bombing two years back that killed Daggett's parents and left his son Duncan a paraplegic. Daggett picks up Kort's trail again, though, after the German questions and kills a Seattle flight instructor and then somehow causes the crash of a plane taking off from L.A.'s LAX—a crash that, after complex forensic deduction, Daggett and his new sidekick, alluring FAA agent Lynn Greene, eventually pinpoint to poison gas released on the plane. Tracing Kort to D.C., Daggett and Greene realize that the German plans to down another plane. The pair give chase even as, right under Daggett's nose, Kort sets about seducing Daggett's live-in girlfriend, Caroline, who responds warmly in retaliation for Daggett's growing interest in Greene. Stealing Caroline's keys, Kort sneaks into Daggett's house, kidnaps crippled Duncan, and then fakes his own death in order to divert Daggett from discovering his goal: to crash a plane into the Pentagon, where five leading industrial polluters will be meeting. But as the minutes to the ``hard fall'' of the plane tick down, Kort still hasn't figured on Caroline's furious love for Duncan or on Daggett's rage for revenge at any cost.... Not as psychologically probing as Undercurrents, and hampered by the far-fetched premise, but, overall, a well-oiled thriller with every gear smoothly spinning at top speed.
Pub Date: Jan. 17, 1992
ISBN: 0-385-30138-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1991
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
There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.
Passion, friendship, heartbreak, and forgiveness ring true in Lovering's debut, the tale of a young woman's obsession with a man who's "good at being charming."
Long Island native Lucy Albright, starts her freshman year at Baird College in Southern California, intending to study English and journalism and become a travel writer. Stephen DeMarco, an upperclassman, is a political science major who plans to become a lawyer. Soon after they meet, Lucy tells Stephen an intensely personal story about the Unforgivable Thing, a betrayal that turned Lucy against her mother. Stephen pretends to listen to Lucy's painful disclosure, but all his thoughts are about her exposed black bra strap and her nipples pressing against her thin cotton T-shirt. It doesn't take Lucy long to realize Stephen's a "manipulative jerk" and she is "beyond pathetic" in her desire for him, but their lives are now intertwined. Their story takes seven years to unfold, but it's a fast-paced ride through hookups, breakups, and infidelities fueled by alcohol and cocaine and with oodles of sizzling sexual tension. "Lucy was an itch, a song stuck in your head or a movie you need to rewatch or a food you suddenly crave," Stephen says in one of his point-of-view chapters, which alternate with Lucy's. The ending is perfect, as Lucy figures out the dark secret Stephen has kept hidden and learns the difference between lustful addiction and mature love.
There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.Pub Date: June 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6964-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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