Only experts will be able to keep in mind the differences between, say, an HIT helicopter and a HIND gunship, but so many...
Acronym-encrusted, jargon-heavy, military shoot-’em-up.
The appeal of Richard Marcinko’s Rogue Warrior autobiography, and subsequent Rogue Warrior novels (all written with Weisman), was that America’s fighters—like Marcinko—could grab the latest military hardware and win any fight, anywhere, anytime, and that the only real enemy they faced were incompetent bureaucrats who wouldn’t let our gung-ho guys (and gals) do their thing. Army Special Forces Major Mike Ritzik and the rest of the soldier-heroes Weisman introduces find more than enough reasons to share that frustration as they race to rescue a CIA team captured in the Chinese desert by Islamic Uzbeki separatist-terrorists who’ve stolen an old but lethal Chinese-made atom bomb. Fortunately, the straight-talking Secretary of Defense, Robert “Rocky” Rockman, as well as American President Pete Forrest, a pro-military Vietnam war veteran, put Ritzik’s mission on the front burner. America is about to sign a nuclear weapons reduction treaty with China, and the CIA team, posing as filmmakers, had been planting seismic listening devices to detect underground tests. Not only are the terrorists crazed (the leader kills one of the team on a caprice), but China has already dispatched soldiers to get its bomb back—and finding a covert CIA team along with the bad guys wouldn’t look good for the US. Ritzik assembles a crack team of Delta Force specialists with names like Rowdy and Ty but gets two extra passengers: beautiful but brainy Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy Tracy Wei-Liu, the only person nearby capable of disarming the bomb; and Michael “Mickey D” Dunne, a Special Operations Air Regiment (SOAR) helicopter pilot. Snatching the CIA team from the terrorists is almost routine, but then there are Chinese troops arriving in helicopters.
Only experts will be able to keep in mind the differences between, say, an HIT helicopter and a HIND gunship, but so many crackerjack good guys, stirring esprit de corps, and spectacular explosions make for a suspenseful war fantasy.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2003
ISBN: 0-06-052409-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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