Nancy Drew meets Antiques Roadshow.
Classic old chestnut from the late Dame Catherine Cookson (The Silent Lady, 2002, etc.).
Brawny antiques dealer Paul Aylmer took in little Alison Read after the demise of her uncle Humphrey, Paul’s wartime chum and business partner (the girl’s parents had died long before and tragically). Moving briskly past all the bodies, the author gets down to brass upholstery tacks soon enough: Can’t Paul see that Alison is a woman now? Young, yes—but wise beyond her tender years, and with an unerring eye for fabulous furniture and noteworthy knickknacks with distinguished pedigrees. Over the years Paul taught Alison everything he knows about things like French eight-day timepieces and octagonal Georgian wine coolers, but now he seems oblivious to her budding charms. Alison indulges in secret sobs into her pillow once in a while, but she knows that loneliness may well be an orphan’s cross to bear and dries her girlish tears soon enough—until Paul’s former flame reappears. Mrs. Freda Gordon-Platt is a heartbreaker still, and Alison jealously wonders what Freda wants from Paul this time. Apparently, Freda’s dotty mother-in-law, the first Mrs. Gordon-Platt, has concealed some valuable necklaces within various odd objects that have subsequently vanished. Is there anything Paul can do? The convoluted history of the Gordon-Platts is gradually revealed but not the whereabouts of the jewelry. The redoubtable old lady, a former beauty and social butterfly who no longer has use for such baubles, has hidden it all safely away from the clutches of scheming Freda—as well as from the much more deserving Margaret, her hopelessly plain daughter who committed the unpardonable sin of marrying beneath her. Enter yet another Gordon-Platt to vie with a young furniture dealer for Alison’s favor. Alison, however, is too preoccupied with her unrequited tenderness for Paul and the mystery of the missing necklaces to pay much attention. Is it possible that the old writing case up for auction holds a secret compartment? A deft twist of a penknife will reveal a surprise . . . .
Nancy Drew meets Antiques Roadshow.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2002
ISBN: 1-58547-064-3
Page Count: 184
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2002
Simmering with tension, this tragic, albeit imperfect, mystery is sure to keep readers inching off their seats.
A forsaken family bound by grief still struggles to pick up the pieces 12 years after their mother’s death.
When famous author Gil Coleman sees “his dead wife standing on the pavement below” from a bookshop window in a small town on the southern coast of England, he follows her, but to no avail, and takes a near-fatal fall off a walkway on the beach. As soon as they hear word of his accident, Gil’s grown daughters, Nan and Flora, drop everything and return to their seaside family home in Spanish Green. Though her father’s health is dire, Flora, Gil’s youngest, can’t help but be consumed by the thought that her mother, Ingrid—who went missing and presumably drowned (though the body was never found) off the coast more than a decade ago—could be alive, wandering the streets of their town. British author Fuller’s second novel (Our Endless Numbered Days, 2015) is nimbly told from two alternating perspectives: Flora’s, as she re-evaluates the loose ends of her mother’s ambiguous disappearance; and Ingrid’s, through a series of candid letters she writes, but never delivers, to Gil in the month leading up to the day she vanishes. The most compelling parts of this novel unfold in Ingrid’s letters, in which she chronicles the dissolution of her 16-year marriage to Gil, beginning when they first meet in 1976: Gil is her alluring professor, they engage in a furtive love affair, and fall into a hasty union precipitated by an unexpected pregnancy; Gil gains literary fame, and Ingrid is left to tackle motherhood alone (including two miscarriages); and it all bitterly culminates in the discovery of an irrevocable betrayal. Unbeknownst to Gil and his daughters, these letters remain hidden, neglected, in troves of books throughout the house, and the truth lies seductively within reach. Fuller’s tale is eloquent, harrowing, and raw, but it’s often muddled by tired, cloying dialogue. And whereas Ingrid shines as a protagonist at large, the supporting characters are lacking in depth.
Simmering with tension, this tragic, albeit imperfect, mystery is sure to keep readers inching off their seats.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-941040-51-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Tin House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
A super-exorcism that leaves the taste of somebody else's blood in your mouth and what a bad taste it is. King presents us with the riddle of a small Maine town that has been deserted overnight. Where did all the down-Easters go? Matter of fact, they're still there but they only get up at sundown. . . for a warm drink. . . .Ben Mears, a novelist, returns to Salem's Lot (pop. 1319), the hometown he hasn't seen since he was four years old, where he falls for a young painter who admires his books (what happens to her shouldn't happen to a Martian). Odd things are manifested. Someone rents the ghastly old Marsten mansion, closed since a horrible double murder-suicide in 1939; a dog is found impaled on a spiked fence; a healthy boy dies of anemia in one week and his brother vanishes. Ben displays tremendous calm considering that you're left to face a corpse that sits up after an autopsy and sinks its fangs into the coroner's neck. . . . Vampirism, necrophilia, et dreadful alia rather overplayed by the author of Carrie (1974).
Pub Date: Oct. 17, 1975
ISBN: 0385007515
Page Count: 458
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1975
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