A solid, sexy thriller that should appeal to romance and crime-drama fans alike.
A debut novel mixes elements of mystery and romance to tell the story of a detective who must stay focused on her work in the heat of a passionate and unexpected encounter.
Isabelle “Isa” Carte is an ambitious and steel-nerved career woman, as the reader learns from the very beginning when she reacts with indifference to her long-term boyfriend leaving her for another woman. She is too preoccupied with her job as a detective to have time for romance. But when the body of her ex-boyfriend’s new lover is found in the river in Winnipeg, with Isabelle’s name written in lipstick on her forehead, she cannot deny that she is deeply disturbed. Encouraged by her work partner, Hank Curtis, she decides to hide out with her German shepherd, Jack, in her family’s lakeside cabin in rural Ontario for one week. Frustrated that she cannot play an active part in the investigation, her attention is soon diverted when she meets a rugged mountain man named Alec Reed. She’s initially suspicious of the handsome stranger (“She should try to figure out who Alec Reed was and what he was all about, if nothing else, to rule him out as a suspect....For her own safety, she should probably learn more about who he was and why he was here”). When a passionate relationship between them unfolds as quickly as her stalker continues to kill, Isa is torn between her work and her newfound love. The fiery combination of zealous romance and thrilling crime mystery makes the novel an absorbing and fast-paced read. Told in the third-person omniscient, the story flits among the perspectives of Isa, her new lover, and the killer. But as gripping as the murder mystery plotline is, so is the tragic family history of Alec, which is revealed to the reader long before he tells Isa. The author often uses the appropriate analogy of a storm to describe her protagonist’s unrelenting tumult: “nature seemed to be cleansed after yesterday’s storm…so much peace and beauty around Isa, but so much turmoil going on within her.” In addition to the rounded character development, there are moments of pure, uncensored sensuality that should give fans of romance and erotica welcome goose bumps. But the subsequent conclusion to the investigation will likely leave readers disappointed.
A solid, sexy thriller that should appeal to romance and crime-drama fans alike.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4602-7661-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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