The prolific, ever-readable John D. returns to the subject of unscrupulous land-development deals on the Gulf Coast; and this time he keeps things far leaner and sharper, without the emphasis on romantic/sentimental subplots that made Condominium a bit bland. . .and so widely popular. The oddly sympathetic villain here is yearning wheeler-dealer Tuck Loomis, a near-60 womanizer who has almost achieved the wealth and respectability of a full-fledged tycoon. All he needs is for one more big deal to come through: his Bernard Island scam. Loomis, you see, bought this island on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, began an elaborate (largely phony) development scheme, just waiting for the US Park Service to declare the land part of the National Seashore. And now Loomis is awaiting the trial that will determine how much the federal government will have to pay him for appropriating his land and mining his supposedly grand development-plan. While Loomis dispenses a few more bribes and gloats in anticipation, however, real-estate man Wade Rowley—whose firm handled the sales of Bernard Island plots for Loomis—realizes that many of those land-sales agreements were fraudulent. So, being a noble hero much like the one in Condominium, Wade turns his evidence over to a US attorney—despite the ragings of Wade's shady partner Bern Gibbs (a Loomis stooge). And when Loomis' desperate efforts at cover-up lead to the inadvertent murder of pathetic partner Bern, Wade does all he can to bring about Loomis' total downfall—with crucial help from one of Loomis' ex-girl. friends. MacDonald's ecology message is, again, rather heavily laid on. And one or two of the compressed subplots—e.g., the adolescent turmoil of Wade's teen-age son—seem extraneous. Overall, however, MacDonald fills out his essentially simple plot with just enough twists and just the right textures: the quirky pathos of the assorted, uncliched bad guys; the edgy touches that keep the supporting players (Wade's devoted wife, Bern's ambitious mistress) from becoming soap-opera types; the resonant ironies—like the fact that both mastermind Loomis and one of the sad bribe-takers are taking care of stroke-victim relatives. Slow to get started, tougher and darker and slighter than Condominium—but ultimately satisfying and quietly compelling.
Pub Date: June 16, 1986
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1986
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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