Tense and rather lush, expertly working the wonderful setting without overplaying the cultural clash: eerily well suited to...
A straight-arrow young Yorkshireman dives headlong into the corruption of European Shanghai in the 1920s—and very nearly drowns.
China’s rich, rotten plum of a port is the star in this very noir debut by British TV reporter Bradby. The innocent Englishman is Richard Field, son of an obsessively upright but abusive father and a much-higher-class mother with whose very posh relatives Field rather shyly connects upon his arrival in grotesquely divided Shanghai. Field, without a dime but well educated and a fine boxer, has taken a job as a detective in the British police force that keeps the peace in the Imperial sector of Shanghai’s international enclave. He is promptly paired with Detective Caprisi, a tough Chicagoan with a bitter past, and assigned to the investigation of the brutal murder of one of the many Russian demimondaines living in the European underworld. The investigation is hampered immediately by rivalries within the police force and by the early discovery that the victim was the property of Lu, the most powerful Chinese gangster in the city. To complicate further, Natasha, the beautiful but damaged singer in the flat next to the murder victim's, proves irresistible to the handsome and grievously inexperienced young Field. Field’s persistent inquiries into the murder and Lu’s doings stir things up dangerously, as the European community has largely accommodated the gangster to keep things smooth in the business sector, and Field would be a goner were it not for his connection to Uncle Geoffrey Donaldson, a war hero who sits at the top of the thoroughly rotten social heap. There is also protection from the good guys on the police force, but who the good guys are is not at all clear, and becomes even less so as the trail leads to earlier and similar murders of other hapless Russian beauties. Sifting into the social chaos is that most explosive new ingredient, communism.
Tense and rather lush, expertly working the wonderful setting without overplaying the cultural clash: eerily well suited to these parlous times.Pub Date: April 16, 2002
ISBN: 0-385-50397-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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