Booklist Reviews
The U.S. president's seven-year-old daughter, Cassie, is trapped in a nightmare world after escaping a violent kidnapping attempt in France. The little girl is placed in the care of Dr. Jessica Riley, who brought her own sister, Melissa, back from a catatonic state and now hopes to do the same for Cassie. Melissa, a student at Harvard, is impelled by her dreams to visit Jessica at their home in Virginia, where she becomes involved with her sister's newest patient. The little girl and the Riley household are sheltered from the press by a small army of Secret Service agents, but they can't keep Cassie's savior, the mysterious Michael Travis, away. The president acknowledges his help but sees him as a threat because he's an international thief and his true motivation is unclear. The president requests that Travis be kept away from the child. Against the president's orders, Jessica decides to involve Travis in her treatment; when he needs to go to Amsterdam for a secret business deal, he takes all three gals with him in a well-orchestrated escape from the Secret Service. This leads to a bloody pursuit by Travis' associates, the kidnappers, and the Secret Service. Johansen has cleverly merged elements from one of her old romances, The Wind Dancer (1991), with this newest thriller, resulting in a winning page-turner that will please old and new fans alike. ((Reviewed March 15, 2001)) Copyright 2001 Booklist Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
Highly contrived thriller about a top-secret race to save the life of the president's daughter.President Jonathan Andreas has asked Dr. Jessica Riley, a somewhat unorthodox psychotherapist, to take seven-year-old Cassie to her secluded Virginia farm, with the hope that there Jessica can cure his severely traumatized daughter. Cassie has withdrawn after witnessing masked assailants murder her beloved French nanny while her parents were away in Paris. Catatonic except for periods of incoherent screaming, Cassie is unreachable. No one knows that the killers were after the Wind Dancer, a golden statue of Pegasus, previously owned by the likes of Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, and the Borgias, and now in the possession of the Andreas family. But the intruders didn't get the statue. It was on loan to a Paris museum, and all they saw was its shimmering image—in a hologram. Jessica suspects that seeing the real thing again might bring Cassie back, but Jessica's younger sister Melissa disagrees. Melissa herself recovered from six catatonic years after seeing her parents burn alive in a car wreck, and now, as a result of her sojourn in that twilight world, she is telepathic and can hold psychic conversations with others of her ilk. Her mind-melding with Cassie,however, is to no avail. The sisters meet Michael Travis, a shadowy international operative who witnessed his father's death in an explosion years ago and is similarly gifted. Impatient for results, Jessica kidnaps Cassie and takes her to Paris to see the Wind Dancer. Not surprisingly, the good doctor is set upon by mysterious assailants. Meanwhile, there are plenty of bad guys in silly disguises skulking around, but when the real villain emerges, Michael and Melissa will manage to foil him—and fall in love.Johansen's seventh kitsch thriller (The Killing Game , 1999, etc.), complete with a cartoon president who seems to live in France. Supernatural special effects don't even half-plug the holes here. . . .Kelly, ThomasTHE RACKETSFarrar, Straus & Giroux (384 pp.)$24.00Jun. 2001ISBN: 0-374-17720-1An absorbing, bleak urban melodrama about Manhattan politics and labor union intrigues, from the former sandhog, mayoral aide, and author of the smashing debut novel Payback (1997).It begins on a high note when Jimmy Dolan, advance man for New York's Republican mayor, rashly decks Teamster boss Frankie Keefe at a highly visible political event—an act that costs Jimmy his job, and initiates a downward spiral reminiscent of John O'Hara's Appointment in Samara. But Kelly has bigger fish to fillet, and the story slowly and steadily branches out, focusing in turn on the interconnected experiences of several vividly realized characters. Some of the more prominent are Jimmy's widowed father Mike, an honest teamster who'll challenge Keefe's presidency in the upcoming election; Jimmy's former lover, policewoman Tara O'Neil (who's wounded in action, in a brilliantly handled scene); their childhood friend Liam Brady, a hard-drinking Gulf War veteran, now an "arms trafficker" with lucrative criminal connections; Frankie Keefe's stone-faced enforcer Pete Cronin (who's also Keefe's wife's lover); and—best of all—Jimmy's uncle Pius "Punchy" Dolan, an adipose, paranoid millionaire whose criminal past is slowly, remorselessly hunting him down. Kelly knows this turf as well as any contemporary novelist, which explains why these bristling, profanity-laden episodes are invariably potent and convincing—even if readers are likely to note a few too many echoes of the urban crime novel's consensus classic: Mario Puzo's The Godfather. Nevertheless, Kelly works interesting variations on familiar formulas, particularly in the story's latter half, when Jimmy Dolan takes up the crusade his father could not finish, Cronin plots against his boss, and the Russian mob's involvement in union politicking keeps upping the body count.At its best, reminiscent of Richard Price and Nelson Algren, as well as the aforementioned Puzo; in its more generic moments, rather like an extended episode of NYPD Blue. Still, a rattling good read. Copyright Kirkus 2001 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved
Library Journal Reviews
From GQ's fiction editor: the story of a man obsessed with accumulating one million frequent flier miles and the hell that breaks loose as he approaches his goal. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Publishers Weekly Reviews
At the center of Johansen's latest suspense thriller (after The Search) is the Wind Dancer, a priceless gold statue of the winged horse Pegasus. The statue has been in the Andreas family since the fall of Troy and now, centuries later, U.S. President Jonathan Andreas is in Paris to lend the family heirloom to a museum. On the night of the ceremony, his daughter, seven-year-old Cassie, is awakened at the family's farmhouse in the south of France by masked men who murder her nanny and her nurse, intent on kidnapping Cassie and ransoming her in exchange for the Wind Dancer. Cassie is saved in the nick of time by the arrival of Michael Travis, international underworld information dealer, but eight months later, the child is being treated in the Virginia home of psychiatrist Dr. Jessica Riley and Jessica's psychically extrasensitive sister, Melissa, for severe catatonic trauma. She hasn't spoken a word since the raid and has retreated into an imaginary tunnel where the Wind Dancer rescues her from pursuing monsters. Michael Travis then reappears and lures Cassie and the Riley sisters into a web of intrigue, taking them to Amsterdam, Paris and eventually back to the scene of the crime. There's a lot going on here, what with the telepathic dream sequences, a demented art fanatic determined to steal the statue, a subplot involving the Russian diamond cartel and the romantic tension between Melissa and Travis. Johansen's fans will enjoy the swirling plot lines, staccato dialogue and abrupt scene shifts that mark her style. National advertising. (May 29) Forecast: Fans may recognize the Wind Dancer, the subject (and title) of one of Johansen's mass market romances. The author's dependable mix of suspense and romance will make for good beach reading, but some may prefer to wait for the paperback. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.