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THE FONTANA RESURRECTION

Name: THE FONTANA RESURRECTION
Author: David Edey
ISBN: 978-1460201923

by David Edey ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 26, 2014

An often engaging thriller told in an atypical but wholly distinctive style.

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In Edey’s placid debut thriller, a woman’s body washes ashore in Canada and her daughter and son-in-law are determined to find those responsible for her death.

An officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police calls his former colleague, Stanley Watson, to tell him that an unidentified female corpse has been found on a Nova Scotia beach. Police rightly suspect that it’s Stanley’s terminally ill mother-in-law, Marion, whom Stanley and his wife, Chelsea, had reported missing from her European seniors’ home. Chelsea travels to Sherbrooke to commemorate where Marion was found with a plaque. In a flashback from nearly a year earlier, an enigmatic woman named Lee plans to create a clinic for the wealthy elderly (like Marion), but it’s clear that she has darker motives: Her funding comes from a man with possible mob ties, and the surgeon she plans to hire is a literal butcher. This thriller is more invested in the conception of the crime and its consequences than the crime itself. The second chapter, which takes up nearly half of the book, is told primarily from Lee’s perspective as she discusses putting the clinic together and, eventually, reveals her ultimate goal. The author takes an intriguing approach, however, opting never to show the actual commission of the murder, instead jumping forward in time to show Stanley as he learns who may be behind Marion’s killing. Edey can deliver indelible turns of phrase, such as when he describes a woman greeting Lee with “cold displeasure.” However, some metaphors are less apt, as when Lee, at one point, sports a “hedge-apple smile.” The story’s structure deftly covers the psyches of both the victims and perpetrators, although lengthy passages, focusing on single characters, make it easy to predict when, for example, Stanley’s 12-year-old granddaughter will return to the story.

An often engaging thriller told in an atypical but wholly distinctive style.

Pub Date: June 26, 2014

ISBN: 978-1460201923

Page Count: 328

Publisher: FriesenPress

Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2014

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

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Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.

After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).

Pub Date: July 1, 2002

ISBN: 0-345-45071-X

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.