A collection destined to be popular with those who love amateur sleuths.
Smart plotting and a strong sense of place define this collection of mystery stories by playwright Elwood.
In this short-story collection–the third to feature the eccentric, artsy Beary family–setting stands out. The title story, "The Beacon," features an offshore buoy that's comfort and menace to an aging singer, while in "The Mystery of the Boston Teapots" a vacation along Boston's Freedom Trail uncovers a smuggling plot. An old family legend and a beautiful lake take center stage as a ghostly crime seems to recur in "Echo of Evil." Elwood, a resident of Vancouver, knows how to capture the beauty of Canada and even New England. She's invented an enjoyable set of oddball characters in the Bearys. Controlling matron Edwina and her comfort-loving husband Bertram are just the beginning of the roll call. Their children consist of detective Richard, ambitious lawyer Sylvia (and her less-than-driven husband) and opera-singing Phillippa. They are an inquisitive lot, reminiscent of some of Agatha Christie's quirkier novice gumshoes. Phillippa, the only unmarried Beary, has her drama in these pages as well, as her romance with another singer first sours and then seems to reignite, while a promising new suitor makes an appearance in the final pages. The stories are marred only by the author’s slight tendency to overwrite, to add the occasional unnecessary adverb or bit of description. Still, the tales are colorful and well-plotted, leaving readers with a sharp sense of these intriguing characters. While these traditional mysteries won’t shock readers out of their comfort zone, the beautiful settings and genuine personalities will charm.
A collection destined to be popular with those who love amateur sleuths.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2009
ISBN: 29.95
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hilderbrand’s portrait of the upper-crust Tate clan through the years is so deliciously addictive that it will be the “It”...
Queen of the summer novel—how could she not be, with all her stories set on an island—Hilderbrand delivers a beguiling ninth (The Castaways, 2009, etc.), featuring romance and mystery on isolated Tuckernuck Island.
The Tate family has had a house on Tuckernuck (just off the coast of swanky Nantucket) for generations. It has been empty for years, but now Birdie wants to spend a quiet mother-daughter week there with Chess before Chess’s wedding to Michael Morgan. Then the unthinkable happens—perfect Chess (beautiful, rich, well-bred food editor of Glamorous Home) dumps the equally perfect Michael. She quits her job, leaves her New York apartment for Birdie’s home in New Canaan, and all without explanation. Then the unraveling continues: Michael dies in a rock-climbing accident, leaving Chess not quite a widow, but devastated, guilty, unreachable in the shell of herself. Birdie invites her younger daughter Tate (a pretty, naïve computer genius) and her own bohemian sister India, whose husband, world-renowned sculptor Bill Bishop, killed himself years ago, to Tuckernuck for the month of July, in the hopes that the three of them can break through to Chess. Hunky Barrett Lee is their caretaker, coming from Nantucket twice a day to bring groceries and take away laundry (idyllic Tuckernuck is remote—no phone, no hot water, no ferry) as he’s also inspiring renewed lust in Tate, who has had a crush on him since she was a kid. The author jumps between the four women—Tate and her blossoming relationship with Barrett, India and her relationship with Lula Simpson, a painter at the Academy where India is a curator, Birdie, who is surprised by the recent kindnesses of ex-husband Grant, and finally Chess, who in her journal is uncoiling the sordid, sad circumstances of her break with normal life and Michael’s death.
Hilderbrand’s portrait of the upper-crust Tate clan through the years is so deliciously addictive that it will be the “It” beach book of the summer.Pub Date: July 6, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-316-04387-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2010
The Stand did less well than The Shining, and The Dead Zone will do less well than either—as the King of high horror (Carrie) continues to move away from the grand-gothic strain that once distinguished him from the other purveyors of psychic melodrama. Here he's taken on a political-suspense plot formula that others have done far better, giving it just the merest trappings of deviltry. Johnnie Smith of Cleaves Mills, Maine, is a super-psychic; after a four-year coma, he has woken up to find that he can see the future—all of it except for certain areas he calls the "dead zone." So Johnnie can do great things, like saving a friend from death-by-lightning or reuniting his doctor with long-lost relatives. But Johnnie also can see a horrible presidential candidate on the horizon. He's Mayor Gregory Aromas Stillson of Ridgeway, N.H., and only Johnnie knows that this apparently klutzy candidate is really the devil incarnate—that if Stillson is elected he'll become the new Hitler and plunge the world into atomic horror! What can Johnnie do? All he can do is try to assassinate this Satanic candidate—in a climactic shootout that is recycled and lackluster and not helped by King's clumsy social commentary (". . . it was as American as The Wonderful Worm of Disney"). Johnnie is a faceless hero, and never has King's banal, pulpy writing been so noticeable in its once-through-the-typewriter blather and carelessness. Yes, the King byline will ensure a sizeable turnout, but the word will soon get around that the author of Carrie has this time churned out a ho-hum dud.
Pub Date: Aug. 16, 1979
ISBN: 0451155750
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1979
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