In Bartos’ mystery debut, an American teacher staying at a South African convent uses her skills as a former crime reporter to solve the murder of a nun.
Annabelle Chase, when not teaching crime reporting in Denver, spends her summers in Malamulele, at a convent where her late aunt was a nun. The normally tranquil convent is thrown into disarray when Sister Valaria is found murdered, her head nearly severed. Annabelle’s pal, Sister Bridget, is a quick suspect; she’d had an argument with Valaria not long ago, culminating with a threat from Bridget. But Annabelle soon realizes that Bridget may have been the intended target, especially after someone tries to grab Bridget and the two friends share an unwelcome encounter with a cobra in Annabelle’s car. Annabelle investigates Valaria’s murder with handsome Detective Baloyi, and a series of ritual killings, similar to ones from a couple years prior, may have something to do with recent events. The novel establishes itself as a murder mystery right away, opening with a scream in the night. The story’s winsome amateur-sleuth protagonist is in perpetual interrogation mode; she asks Bridget, her closest chum at the convent, rather bluntly, “Did you kill Sister Valaria?” Even being kidnapped doesn’t stop Annabelle from drilling her captor(s) with questions. There are a number of genuinely unsettling moments, like a figure moving in a dark courtyard at the convent or simple accounts of the ritual murders. But the story also uses a subtle humor; e.g., Annabelle notes that nun Bridget’s not “in the habit of breaking her word.” The relationship and eventual intimacy between Annabelle and Baloyi is predictable, but the romance and ongoing murder case are well-balanced. Though it’s a treat to watch the mystery unravel and Annabelle work her way through the pieces, the revelations do rely a little too heavily on coincidence, particularly concerning character relations. This, however, doesn’t detract from Bartos’ bright depictions of South Africa’s skies.
Appealing characters and settings enhance this unnerving murder mystery.
Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-1502945044
Page Count: 300
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Irritatingly trite woman-in-periler from lawyer-turned-novelist Baldacci. Moving away from the White House and the white-shoe Washington law firms of his previous bestsellers (Absolute Power, 1996; Total Control, 1997), Baldacci comes up with LuAnn Tyler, a spunky, impossibly beautiful, white-trash truck stop waitress with a no-good husband and a terminally cute infant daughter in tow. Some months after the birth of Lisa, LuAnn gets a phone call summoning her to a make-shift office in an unrented storefront of the local shopping mall. There, she gets a Faustian offer from a Mr. Jackson, a monomaniacal, cross-dressing manipulator who apparently knows the winning numbers in the national lottery before the numbers are drawn. It seems that LuAnn fits the media profile of what a lottery winner should be—poor, undereducated but proud—and if she's willing to buy the right ticket at the right time and transfer most of her winnings to Jackson, she'll be able to retire in luxury. Jackson fails to inform her, however, that if she refuses his offer, he'll have her killed. Before that can happen, as luck would have it, LuAnn barely escapes death when one of husband Duane's drug deals goes bad. She hops on a first-class Amtrak sleeper to Manhattan with a hired executioner in pursuit. But executioner Charlie, one of Jackson's paid handlers, can't help but hear wedding bells when he sees LuAnn cooing with her daughter. Alas, a winning $100- million lottery drawing complicates things. Jackson spirits LuAnn and Lisa away to Sweden, with Charlie in pursuit. Never fear. Not only will LuAnn escape a series of increasingly violent predicaments, but she'll also outwit Jackson, pay an enormous tax bill to the IRS, and have enough left over to honeymoon in Switzerland. Too preposterous to work as feminine wish-fulfillment, too formulaic to be suspenseful. (Book-of-the-Month Club main selection)
Pub Date: Dec. 2, 1997
ISBN: 0-446-52259-7
Page Count: 528
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1997
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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