Clever plotting, a colorful cast of characters and priceless situations make this comedic crime novel an instant classic.
Targeted by both the feds and his bosses in the Chicago mob after messing up on the job, a prolific hit man hides out in Las Vegas as, of all things, a rabbi.
Sal Cupertine has been offing people for more than 15 years without being seen or leaving a spot of evidence. But on a bad day in 1998, he kills three FBI agents—"Donnie Brascos"—in a hotel room to avoid capture. The mob wants Sal’s head for ruining an unspoken arrangement with the feds that lets it buy heroin from the Mexicans. Sal’s older cousin in the "The Family" secretly transports him to Vegas, where, his face surgically altered, the hit man is trained to become Rabbi David Cohen. Meanwhile, Jeff Hopper, an underachieving FBI agent whose lack of planning is blamed for the deaths of his colleagues, is in pursuit. Suspended for refusing to go along with his superiors’ acceptance of a burned corpse as Sal’s, Hopper has his big moment dressing down mob enforcer Fat Monte, who proves wiser and more sensitive than he looks. Clearly influenced by the great Elmore Leonard, Goldberg puts his own dry comic spin on the material, with perhaps a bit more self-reflection on Sal/David’s part than Leonard would allow. While anyone with an Italian last name is grist for a crime columnist in late-’90s Vegas, the Kosher Nostra is quietly making its own big scores, running illicit schemes out of a local synagogue. With a memory that earned him the nickname Rain Man, Sal is great at spouting quotes from the Torah—even as he eyes his next victim—but has a tendency to mix those words up with Bruce Springsteen lyrics.
Clever plotting, a colorful cast of characters and priceless situations make this comedic crime novel an instant classic.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2014
ISBN: 9781619023444
Page Count: 420
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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
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
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