Kirkus Reviews QR Code
BLOOD JUNCTION by Caroline Carver

BLOOD JUNCTION

by Caroline Carver

Pub Date: Sept. 24th, 2002
ISBN: 0-89296-770-6

India Kane is a high-powered journalist who carries a teddy bear in her backpack because it’s a comfort. She’s on her way to Cooinda, a.k.a. Blood Junction, where her best friend Lauren, also a journalist, claims to have found a relative of India’s. On the way, she finds herself in the squelching outback in need of a ride, only to be blown past by some guy in a Beemer. (India’s interior riposte is typical of Carver’s stilted style: “If I ever come across that shitty BMW again, I will lob it with Molotov cocktails. Not that I know how to make one, but I’ll learn.”) Almost immediately upon her arrival, India’s accused of killing both Lauren and a police officer. After three days in jail, she makes bail from a mysterious source, gets accosted almost immediately on the outside, gets rescued, and then shacks up with the “good” cop, Whitelaw, a guy with good taste in coffee but bad taste in tarantulas, while starting her own investigation. Soon she’s hot on the trail of not only the original two murders, but two others as well, plus a 50-year-old massacre of aboriginals whose trail leads to kangaroo farms and cosmetic factories. Another murder in London may signal another looming massacre, which of course is meant to cover up another massacre of 700 “abos” via experimental virus. Rest assured, India’s lost relative is part of the equation. But who will win India’s heart once all the killing is done?

A plot-driven debut evidently motivated by pipe dreams of a movie sale.