Davis’ writing is heartfelt and effective, but she adds too many superfluous characters and “secrets” to the plot.
An old tobacco plantation buries past secrets and unearths opportunities for new beginnings in Davis’ romantic generation-spanning debut.
Leslie Nichols returns to her North Carolina roots to claim an inheritance left by her estranged grandmother. Once a darling of the luxury lifestyle magazine world, 38-year-old Leslie’s fallen on hard times since glossies have succumbed to electronic media, and she’s eager to unload Peak Plantation, head back to NYC and start anew. Sounds like a solid plan, but the heiress runs into some major stumbling blocks. First, she discovers Grandma Maggie’s ventured into the winemaking industry and left half of her estate to a handsome, younger business partner, Jay Davenport. Second, Leslie’s determination to unload the large house and make a quick killing is thwarted by a real estate market that’s as bottomed out as Leslie. Third, a sepia photograph of an old grave and a set of keys pique Leslie’s curiosity, and suddenly, she’s all hot to uncover secrets about her ancestors. And there are secrets everywhere. After resisting, Leslie agrees to partner with Jay in the wine business and puts her marketing skills to good use. Of course, romantic sparks fly while Leslie discovers old paintings, papers and the unmarked grave in the photo. She also uncovers a tragic event that could hold the key to unanswered questions and searches for witnesses who might know more. Maggie’s father, Henry Gavin, his wife, Susanne, and her hired companion, Adele Laveau, are at the crux of the secret, but Leslie has trouble piecing together the nuggets of information she obtains. That’s because she doesn’t have the same advantage the reader has: Adele narrates much of her story from beyond the grave and supplies huge chunks of the puzzle to readers long before Leslie figures things out. But Leslie can be forgiven for her obtuseness: Although several paces behind the reader, she’s preoccupied with extraneous complications. Jay hasn’t been forthcoming about every aspect of his own life, and haunting memories of her childhood pop up along with her good-for-nothing father.
Davis’ writing is heartfelt and effective, but she adds too many superfluous characters and “secrets” to the plot.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-451-41877-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: NAL Accent/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...
Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.
Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...
A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.
Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how little the boundary-challenged AI, who gets into the case more or less inadvertently, differs from your standard human sidekick with issues.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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