One of this mystery’s investigators may be fluffy, but this thoroughly entertaining novel certainly isn’t.
A recent murder stirs up a cop’s memories of being shot in the line of duty in Ball’s (A Wedding on Ladybug Farm, 2014, etc.) latest thriller.
Aggie Malone, the police chief of Dogleg Island, Florida, barely survived when Darrell Reichart shot her in the head two years ago. She now lives with a bullet lodged in her brain and worries about Darrell’s upcoming trial for his parents’ murders. However, Aggie has the support of her boyfriend, Capt. Ryan Grady, and her faithful companion, Flash, a border collie that was found at the murder scene. Aggie and Flash find a body in the trunk of a car they find in a lagoon, and it turns out that it has a connection to the Reichart killings. Soon Aggie finds herself recalling new details of her own shooting—including the fact that another person was there that night. Meanwhile, her investigation draws her closer and closer to a murderer who hasn’t finished killing quite yet. This is an ample murder mystery with an enthralling protagonist. The story slowly reveals Aggie’s recuperation in flashbacks, and these scenes pay dividends: her injury ultimately ignited her relationship with Grady, and her recurring visions eventually lead to the unraveling of the mystery. The four-legged titular character is endearing and indispensable, and Ball gives him a straightforward perspective: he thinks in basic terms, with Aggie’s safety always in the forefront of his mind. He’s a fine sidekick, and he may be a bit smarter than his human counterparts: he suggests (by barking) that Aggie question a potential witness and exposes (with more barking) a supposed accident as an attempted murder. Ball does such an outstanding job developing Aggie, Flash, and other characters, such as retired sheriff Jerome Bishop, that the murder case gets less attention and decidedly fewer pages. Indeed, readers will likely solve the mystery with relative ease—and wonder why Aggie doesn’t solve it with equal promptness.
One of this mystery’s investigators may be fluffy, but this thoroughly entertaining novel certainly isn’t.Pub Date: May 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0985774899
Page Count: 358
Publisher: Blue Merle Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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