Anyone interested in a good mystery along with insights into marine life will enjoy D’Avanzo’s latest.
Mystery writer D’Avanzo (Demon Spirit, Devil Sea, 2017, etc.) is back on the coast of Maine, dealing with a bunch of lobstermen who want no truck with nosy outsiders.
In the very first chapter, marine biologist and amateur sleuth Mara Tusconi discovers a body under her cousin Gordy Maloy’s mussel aquaculture raft, a body that had belonged to lobsterman Buddy Crawford. Whodunit? Mara soon finds herself on Macomeck Island, a speck in the Gulf of Maine about 25 miles off the coast. Lobstermen have lived on the island for generations, and something akin to the law of the frontier holds sway. Mara, who is fighting her own demons of loneliness and insecurity, finds comfort in grandmotherly Abby Burgess. Abby’s daughter Patty, Gordy’s girlfriend, is sure that the killer is hotheaded Tyler Johnson, reputed druggie. But Mara keeps sniffing around and uncovering old wounds, grudges, and hatreds. There are also very vivid scenes such as a near catastrophe when a sudden squall threatens to swamp Mara’s sea kayak. Pushing on, she begins to recover from her own wounds (some self-inflicted), and the final episode in a submersible with her old flame, Ted McNight, may just put her life back on course. It should also be mentioned that her best confidant is a lobster named Homer, (who of course is very discreet). D’Avanzo writes well (“The knots in my stomach would have made a sailor proud”) and delivers a nice mix of Mara’s outer challenges (who killed Buddy?) and inner (will she ever find love?). She also delivers a lot of very interesting facts about oceanography and marine biology, having earned a Ph.D. from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. That alone is worth the read. She switches to dialect when she deems it appropriate (“lobstah,” “habah,” “remembah”). Some readers may find this charming; others may find it a bit tiresome and distracting. This installment contains a preview of her next Mara Tusconi mystery, Glass Eels, Shattered Sea (2019).
Anyone interested in a good mystery along with insights into marine life will enjoy D’Avanzo’s latest.Pub Date: June 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63381-136-2
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Maine Authors Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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