A delightful first entry in an offbeat mystery series.
This genteel historical mystery proves that even during a natural disaster, there’s room for a fiendish murder.
In Still’s (Shadow of Twilight, 2003) first novel in her Galveston Hurricane series, she deftly introduces readers to her plucky heroine, Dash Gallagher, the Texas city’s first female attorney. She lost her husband and her home last year in the Great Storm of 1900, yet she still works hard to rebuild her practice; meanwhile, she suffers from migraines and strives to adopt two young girls, Teddie and Jinxie, who are orphans like herself. It’s been a struggle for Dash to establish her identity in a changing world: “As an attorney, I might have a man’s job, but I was a lady, a respectable lady....I would be a mother as soon as the judge signed the adoption papers.” To complicate her already busy life, a promising new client named Larisa Dorfman, an estranged member of a wealthy Russian immigrant family, is found drowned near the docks. Dash teams up with her landlord, a Scottish detective named Mr. Barker, to investigate her death, which they soon determine was murder. Author Still expertly interjects social commentary into Dash’s reasoning for needing to solve the case: “I can’t sit around and wait for press stories and whispers to ruin my reputation. I plan to find out who killed her so I can be done with the whole thing.” The author adeptly steers the squabbling duo down a dangerous path as they search for Larisa’s murderer and for a “mystical” treasure sought by the patriarch of the dead woman’s family. Along the way, the pair’s platonic relationship heads toward something more. Still effectively uses the bleak setting of storm-ravaged Galveston as a backdrop and does an equally impressive job of creating memorable secondary characters, such as Dash’s nosy, lady-reporter friend MJ Quakenbush and the members of the snobbish, secretive Karparov clan. The author paces the mystery well, maintaining the feel of a slower era without forfeiting any narrative momentum.
A delightful first entry in an offbeat mystery series.Pub Date: Dec. 8, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-615-46689-7
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Gone Feral Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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