Dirk Pitt returns for his 11th undersea adventure (Shock Wave, 1996, etc.), still as far out and full of derring-do as ever. Along with arms and drugs, Qui Shang, the fourth richest man in the world, smuggles Chinese by the millions into the US, Canada, and Europe. In the near future, the US population is edging toward 360 million, and it begins to seem likely that Chinese will control the West Coast from San Francisco to Alaska. A divided America looms—but, then, no civilization lasts forever. Unless, of course, it has a steady succession of Dirk Pitts to call on for help. Here, Pitt, vacationing on Orion Lake near Seattle, discovers that the frigid lake is a warehouse for thousands of dead Chinese, those who were too infirm to be sold as slaves by Qui Shang or used as prostitutes. Qui Shang has bought much of the US government, including the president, as well as top men in the People's Republic of China. And now, just as Pitt begins to pick up his trail, it turns out he's working on his biggest operation yet. He has built a multibillion-dollar port above New Orleans for no visible economic reason, though in fact he uses it to unload illegals—and also has far more ambitious plans for it. He and his henchmen have devised a plan to divert the Mississippi back into its former bed, thus creating a catastrophe that will give his company a gigantic shipping advantage by sending New Orleans the way of Atlantis. Pitt and his friends at the National Underwater and Marine Agency all but single-handedly uncover Qui Shang's plots by spying on him with submersibles, and little by little they begin to unravel his conspiracy, even recovering some sunken Chinese art treasures (sent abroad by Chiang Kai-shek), essential to the master criminal's plans, before Qui Shang can get them. Speedy storytelling and great fun.
Pub Date: Sept. 25, 1997
ISBN: 0-684-80298-8
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1997
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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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