Peerless conductor Louis Passau, accused on the eve of his 90th birthday of having been a Nazi spy, is to be debriefed by a covey of British and American agents—until two breathless attempts on his life leave him in the maverick hands of Big Herbie Kruger (the paperback The Quiet Dogs, etc.), pulled out from retirement to serve as his father confessor. Once he gets going, Passau seems to be confessing to the entire 20th century. As Louis Packenstky back in Bavaria, he's dragged off to America by his shoemaker father; then, suddenly discovering his musical vocation as Louis Packensteiner in New York, he defrauds his father and takes off for Prohibition Chicago, resurfacing with his friend and protector Charlie Giarre as Louis Packy—before selling out both Charlie and his smitten sister Sophie by arranging a liquor hijacking and going underground again. As Louis Passau, he wastes no time in marrying Hollywood money (a dope-addicted star) and clawing his way to a top conducting post (first poisoning the current maestro, whose absence gives him his debut). And this is all before he even gets pressured into any of his long-term spying jobs—for the Nazis, for the CIA, for the KGB (the last two involving a satisfying, though incredible, conspiracy lasting for years). As Passau's story winds down, it begins to interlock uncomfortably with Herbie's betrayal by his old flame Ursula Zunder, who sold out their joint operation to the KGB; and Gardner makes much of the increasingly twisted relations between the confessor and his interlocutor, eventually ensnaring Herbie's new love Pucky Curtiss, who's helping him keep Passau one step ahead of all those spies and mobsters who'd like him dead—though not, finally, to the climactic effect he presumably intends. Disappointing as a generational spy epic to set alongside Gardner's nonpareil Secret Generations trilogy (though a promised sequel may develop some patterns hastily dropped here), this works best as a sweepingly enjoyable soap opera of ambitious scheming, sexual conquest, and the inevitable payback.
Pub Date: Sept. 7, 1993
ISBN: 1-883402-24-7
Page Count: 624
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1993
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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