A well-crafted Gothic suspense story with an engaging heroine.
An aspiring private investigator uncovers a mystery when she takes a job as an au pair.
Ashley Smeeton always dreamed of becoming a sleuth. When she was 9, she witnessed her first investigation when a murder mystery unfolded in her hometown. Now in her mid-20s, she has set up an agency in Montreal, but she is unable to accept clients until she receives her license from the government. In need of cash, she accepts a summer job as an au pair at Columbine Lodge in the Laurentian Mountains. Her client is Layla Sampson, a single mother with a 4-year-old daughter, Meade. When Ashley arrives at the lodge, she encounters an eccentric and wealthy but deeply dysfunctional family. Lionel Sampson owns the lodge and controls the finances. Along with Layla and Meade, he shares the home with his sister, Edyth, and nephew, Peter. After a slow start, Ashley bonds with the quiet but perceptive Meade and befriends members of the household staff, including the charming and seductive Jon Perez. What begins as a routine job takes an ominous turn when residents of the lodge die suddenly, and Ashley is drawn into a web of family secrets and treachery. Dowdall’s (After the Winter, 2017) latest novel offers a resourceful heroine, atmospheric settings, and well-plotted suspense. First introduced in After the Winter, Ashley is a likable heroine whose inquisitive nature helps her navigate the complicated dynamics of the Sampson family. Dowdall skillfully uses the settings throughout the tale, including the bustling city of Montreal—featuring “the thundering boxcars and the whine of the electric train”—and the lodge with its unique hillside design. Although the settings are effective, there are a few similarities between the lodge and Midwinter, the Quebec estate in After the Winter. Both are remote estates owned by wealthy but troubled families. Perhaps Ashley’s next case will keep her in Montreal. The storytelling is strong and confident, and Dowdall includes enough back story to satisfy both newcomers and established fans of the series. This installment should appeal to fans of Louise Penny.
A well-crafted Gothic suspense story with an engaging heroine.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5092-1736-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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