Juiceless, uninspired, routine: Woods’s worst yet.
Hit-or-miss thrillermeister Woods (The Short Forever, p. 140, etc.) misses big-time with this tale of a real-estate developer who’s executing the competition, and everybody else in sight, in Police Chief Holly Barker’s beloved Orchid Beach.
Expecting lively interest in the Palmetto Gardens property the feds had seized from a drug-laundering operation, the General Services Administration gets deadly interest instead: Two likely bidders drop out of the action when they’re shot dead, and the shooter just misses the only surviving bidder whose offer is acceptable, orchid-growing retiree Ed Shine, as he’s enjoying a get-acquainted nightcap with Holly and her father Ham (Orchid Blues, 2001, etc.). Exequies for the departed are cut short by Holly’s discovery of a clandestine listening device in her place. Though it’s never clear what the bugger hoped to learn, his identity as Fort Lauderdale locksmith Carlos Alvarez is revealed when his corpse is dumped in the Indian River, conveniently in Holly’s jurisdiction. Since the identity of the trigger man is obvious and that of his paymaster scarcely less so, there’s nothing to do but watch (1) Holly’s turf battles with her old FBI friend Harry Crisp, (2) Holly’s between-the-sheets wrestling with her new FBI friend Grant Early, and (3) Holly’s participation in a slaughter that soon rises like a Saturn rocket as the conspirators try to cover up for their lack of secrecy and finesse by killing everybody they’ve ever met. (Orchid Beach’s Chief of Police is responsible for two of the ten casualties before a bomb sends the body count spiraling out of sight.) Even if edenic Orchid Beach is “the way Florida should have turned out, but didn’t,” it’s hard to break a sweat worrying about the deaths of so many faceless felons and their associates in the absence of mystery, suspense, or any complications other than where to put the body bags.
Juiceless, uninspired, routine: Woods’s worst yet.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-399-14929-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2002
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
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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