The Four Corners of the Sky: A Novel

From Publishers Weekly A daredevil pilot heads out on a wild goose chase and learns to slow down and enjoy life in Malone's (The Last Noel) exuberant but ultimately unwieldy 10th novel. After years of accompanying her con artist father on his exploits, seven-year-old Annie is left on the family's North Carolina farm with her aunt Sam. Annie relishes the stability, but still craves excitement as she grows up, learning to fly the single-engine plane her father left her and becoming a navy fighter pilot. When her father calls years later, he claims that he's dying and needs her help with one last escapade. She agrees--in exchange for the name of the mother she's never known. Annie travels to St. Louis, Mo.; Miami; and Cuba in the service of her elusive father, meeting quirky eccentrics along the way, including her one true love. Bizarre coincidences, caricatured criminals and characters who spurt groan-worthy puns, classic movie lines and Shakespeare quotes in place of meaningful dialogue keep the novel teetering toward the absurd. The novel's ambitious blend of humor, mystery, adventure and sentimentality can be as exhausting as Annie's fast-paced flights. (May) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Michael Dirda This is a fabulously entertaining novel. It's probably a trifle too long, the plot contains a number of improbabilities and it's easy enough to guess at least a couple of the revelations toward the book's end. But you know what? None of this matters. Michael Malone's prose -- as smooth as a con man's patter -- hooks you on the first page, and you're not going anywhere after that, except to your favorite reading chair or backyard hammock or vacation beach blanket. Malone possesses the only gift -- according to Vladimir Nabokov -- that a writer really needs: Shamantsvo, the ability to cast a spell, to enchant. Malone does this mainly through his characters, every one of whom you enjoy spending time with, even the crooks. Especially the crooks. Take, for instance, the elusive Jack Peregrine, a grifter with style and chutzpah to spare. Imagine Robert Redford in "The Sting" -- but with Paul Newman's smarts. The hard-edged mistress of a mobster sums up Jack in a sentence: "He was the best dancer I ever met." Trying to explain Jack to his daughter, one of his confederates insists that the man is actually a "performance artist": "He would make bets how long he could live like a king without touching a cent. No bad plastic or bouncing checks either, though nobody could pass a check like your dad. He'd go weeks without a penny. Nicest restaurants in town, crowded, he'd slip in, dine for free, slip out. Never paid a cent. Best hotel, find an empty suite, put on his tux, drift down to the ballrooms, join weddings, bar mitzvahs, sit at their tables, always the life of the party, never saw the people before or since, but enjoyed their hospitality so much they loved him. You think your father did it to save a penny? He did it for art." In the book's prologue, Jack, on the run, is forced to abandon his 7-year-old daughter, Annie, at his old family home in North Carolina. As he drives off, he tells her that she's a flier and to look in the barn for her birthday present. There the little girl discovers an old Piper Warrior airplane with the words "King of the Sky" written on the fuselage. Flash forward 19 years to the summer of 2001. Annie is now a Navy combat pilot, having been first in her class at Annapolis. She's smart, beautiful and sad. While her aunt Sam (short for Samantha) and Sam's pediatrician companion Clark Goode have long been her beloved adoptive parents, Annie hasn't come to terms with her father's disappearance from her life. She doesn't even know the real name of her mother. It's obviously not Claudette Colbert, which is written on her birth certificate. To add to her wistfulness, she's in the process of divorcing her self-centered husband, whom she had the bad gr