The characters are sympathetic and the quirks of the historic courts interesting enough, but the plot is so tangled in the...
Matthew Shardlake, the hunchback serjeant of the Tudor courts, undertakes his fifth series of cases (Revelation, 2009, etc.).
Henry VIII is marshaling forces for a war with France, but no one will conscript a crippled lawyer. Instead, Shardlake is commanded by the queen when his longtime patron, Queen Catherine, asks him to investigate corruption in the Court of Wards. Shardlake’s task is to go to the Hampshire estate of the Hobbey family and investigate their custody of the teenaged Hugh Curteys and his dead sister Emma. This assignment dovetails neatly with his personal obligation to an agoraphobic, Ellen Fettiplace, who cannot bring herself to leave the asylum of Bedlam. Matthew hopes to uncover the terrible events that cost her her wits, events that handily transpired not far from the Hobbey manor. Shardlake and his assistant Jack Barak ride from London to Hampshire with the king’s recruits, only to find that Hugh Curteys is apparently satisfied with his foster family. Dogged investigation of the Hobbey estate reveals nothing—until Abigail Hobbey is shot through the head during a stag hunt. Meanwhile, a long-dead body, newly discovered, may hold the key to healing Ellen. Can Shardlake and Barak bring justice before the French invade?
The characters are sympathetic and the quirks of the historic courts interesting enough, but the plot is so tangled in the tedium of troop movements and provisions that it drags on longer than Catherine and Henry’s marriage. Best for historical sticklers, military fans and encyclopedists.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-670-02239-7
Page Count: 450
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2010
As usual, Coben piles on the plot twists, false leads, violent set pieces and climactic surprises with the unfocused...
After six years of spinning jaw-dropping stand-alone thrillers, Coben brings back his sports agent—make that everything agent—Myron Bolitar (Darkest Fear, 2000, etc.) for an encore.
Overhearing high-school senior Erin Wilder, his current ladylove’s daughter, sharing confidences with her friend Aimee Biel about getting driven by wasted friends, Myron Bolitar promises both girls that if they ever need a ride, they can call him and he’ll pick them up, no questions asked. All too soon he gets a chance to deliver. Aimee phones him from midtown Manhattan, where he just happens to be staying, and asks him to drive her to suburban New Jersey. Myron obliges but pushes a bit too hard with the questions, and Aimee vanishes into a strange house. The next day she’s still missing, and in jig time the police, armed with Myron’s credit-card slips and EZ-Pass records, come calling. It turns out that Myron’s not a credible suspect. But because everybody connects Aimee’s disappearance to that of fellow student Katie Rochester three months ago, Myron’s on the hook with some serious people, from Aimee’s parents, who beg him to bring her home, to Katie’s mobbed-up dad, who’s too proud to beg but has other ways of getting him to cooperate.
As usual, Coben piles on the plot twists, false leads, violent set pieces and climactic surprises with the unfocused intensity that have made his thrillers (The Innocent, 2005, etc.) such a hot ticket.Pub Date: April 25, 2006
ISBN: 0-525-94949-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
BOOK TO SCREEN
An overly anodyne attempt at Southern gothic.
A series of unfortunate errors consigns a Baltimore nurse to a loveless marriage in the South.
It’s 1943, and Tess, from Baltimore’s Little Italy, is eagerly anticipating her upcoming nuptials. Her frustration grows, though, when her physician fiance, Vincent, accepts an extended out-of-town assignment to treat polio patients. On an impromptu excursion to Washington, D.C., Tess has too many martinis, resulting in a one-night stand with a chance acquaintance, a furniture manufacturer from North Carolina named Henry. Back in Baltimore, Tess’ extreme Catholic guilt over her indiscretion is compounded by the discovery that she’s pregnant. Eschewing a back-street abortion, she seeks out Henry in hopes of arranging child support—but to her shock, he proposes marriage instead. Once married to Henry and ensconced in his family mansion in Hickory, North Carolina, Tess gets a frosty reception from Henry’s mother, Miss Ruth, and his sister, Lucy, not to mention the other ladies of Hickory, especially Violet, who thought she was Henry’s fiancee. Tess’ isolation worsens after Lucy dies in a freak car accident, and Tess, the driver, is blamed. Her only friends are the African-American servants of the household and an African-American medium who helps her make peace with a growing number of unquiet spirits, including her mother, who expired of shock over Tess’ predicament, and Lucy, not to mention the baby, who did not make it to full term. The marriage is passionless but benign. Although Henry tries to be domineering, he always relents, letting Tess take the nurses' licensing exam and, later, go to work in Hickory’s historic polio hospital. Strangely, despite the pregnancy’s end, he refuses to divorce Tess. There are hints throughout that Henry has secrets; Lucy herself intimates as much shortly before her death. Once the polio hospital story takes over, the accident is largely forgotten, leading readers to suspect that Lucy’s death was a convenient way of postponing crucial revelations about Henry. Things develop predictably until, suddenly and belatedly, the plot heats up in an unpredictable but also unconvincing way.
An overly anodyne attempt at Southern gothic.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-08727-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
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