Rayne's 10th keeps suspense simmering with controlled, intelligent prose and a provocative weave of haunted yarns that sort...
More than a century after some notable evildoing, an old dark house continues to cast frightening shadows upon its new owner.
Benedict Doyle dreads his upcoming visit to the North London house he's set to inherit on his 21st birthday, weeks away. Orphaned as a child when his parents died in a car crash, he was raised by his brisk Aunt Lyn and harbors memories of the house, called Holly Lodge, haunted by his great-grandfather. Fortunately, Benedict's stalwart cousin, Nina, is on hand to support and motivate him. Nina's friend Nell West, an experienced antiques dealer (Property of a Lady, 2011, etc.), has inventoried the contents of Holly Lodge and senses that they may include ghosts. Following a flashback to the 1890s that presents great-grandfather Declan Doyle and his sidekick, Colm Rourke, the tale thereafter jumps back and forth in time. Benedict knows Declan as the Mesmer Murderer, a tamer successor to Jack the Ripper, but the reader meets him as a vibrant young man seeking adventure. Together, Declan and Colm pursue the dark mystery of Nicholas Sheehan, a devout priest driven for some unknown reason to a hermetic exile. When Nell meets Benedict, she's unnerved to see his eyes abruptly change color. She decides to keep this observation from her close friend Michael, whose discovery of writings from the time, by a servant girl and an abbot respectively, add another dimension to the story.
Rayne's 10th keeps suspense simmering with controlled, intelligent prose and a provocative weave of haunted yarns that sort themselves out in their own eerily attenuated time.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7278-8162-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2012
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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