Skillfully handled entertainment, with a bonus in reader-friendly lessons in how to launder money, spike a drink and read a...
A mayhem-on-the-mesa mystery by mega-selling genre author Lowell (The Color of Death, 2004, etc.).
Carly May is a genealogist who can read a mitochondrial DNA sequencing chart as readily as she can sort out a family tree. Dan Duran is a lone ranger type, a New Mexico native skilled at following money as it flows in and out of the pockets of crooks and bad guys. (He’s also, it turns out, skilled at giving lonely genealogists what no man has ever done before.) The two find themselves together in the wake, literally, of a senator and local grandee who has, it seems, fathered half of northern New Mexico’s population, and not always with the legal consent of the mother. The senator’s widow knows a story or two, as does her sister, who didn’t much approve of the old man—among whose offspring are some surprises, as well as an apple-of-the-eye grandson (“The Senator kept seeing himself in you, smiling at the thought of you drinking and screwing your way through life”) and a presumptive heir now ready to trade governorship of the state up to the presidency. This dysfunctional extended family is only dimly aware that it’s family, but it’s keenly aware of the Chinatown-like secrets that are not for outsiders to know, and Carly is an outsider extraordinaire in clannish Taos. At first it’s a little vandalism of her SUV office-on-wheels, “shreds and chunks of tread . . . scattered around like pieces of black flesh.” Then it’s a recorded greeting-card warning her to split. Then it’s a bullet whistling in her direction. Who would go to such lengths, and to protect what information? Therein hangs Lowell’s tale, full of mostly accurate local color and never quite predictable. Suffice it to say that readers convinced that the only way to look at a politician is down aren’t going to have their minds changed here.
Skillfully handled entertainment, with a bonus in reader-friendly lessons in how to launder money, spike a drink and read a genomics report.Pub Date: July 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-050415-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2005
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an...
True love flares between two people, but they find that circumstances always impede it.
On a winter day in London, Laurie spots Jack from her bus home and he sparks a feeling in her so deep that she spends the next year searching for him. Her roommate and best friend, Sarah, is the perfect wing-woman but ultimately—and unknowingly—ends the search by finding Jack and falling for him herself. Laurie’s hasty decision not to tell Sarah is the second painful missed opportunity (after not getting off the bus), but Sarah’s happiness is so important to Laurie that she dedicates ample energy into retraining her heart not to love Jack. Laurie is misguided, but her effort and loyalty spring from a true heart, and she considers her project mostly successful. Perhaps she would have total success, but the fact of the matter is that Jack feels the same deep connection to Laurie. His reasons for not acting on them are less admirable: He likes Sarah and she’s the total package; why would he give that up just because every time he and Laurie have enough time together (and just enough alcohol) they nearly fall into each other’s arms? Laurie finally begins to move on, creating a mostly satisfying life for herself, whereas Jack’s inability to be genuine tortures him and turns him into an ever bigger jerk. Patriarchy—it hurts men, too! There’s no question where the book is going, but the pacing is just right, the tone warm, and the characters sympathetic, even when making dumb decisions.
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-57468-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
To her usual mix of love, mystery, and passion, Roberts (Sanctuary, 1997, etc.)—author of 115 romancers in some 17 years—adds Renaissance art and a decidedly Medici-like family: the Joneses of Maine. Dr. Miranda Jones, nearly six feet with flaming red hair and a glacial reserve, is an archeometrist who specializes in the analyzing and dating of Renaissance bronze sculpture. Miranda hopes to secure a world-class reputation for herself by authenticating a 15th-century statue of the Dark Lady, one of the mistresses of Lorenzo the Magnificent, as the undiscovered work of a young Michelangelo. Miranda's mother, Dr. Elizabeth Standford-Jones, the emotionally remote director of the Standjo art lab in Florence, has summoned her daughter from the family's Victorian cliffside home in Jones Point, Maine, to test the statue. Meanwhile, Miranda's father, equally remote, is an archaeologist who spends more time at his digs than at home. In fact, no one in the Jones family has made a successful run at marriage, a failure that Miranda and her alcoholic brother Andrew call the Jones curse. As for the statue, when it's discovered to be a fake, Miranda sets out to prove that someone stole the original. In this she's helped by gorgeous art thief Ryan Boldari (half-Italian, half-Irish), who's come to Jones Point to steal yet another bronze, which also turns out to be a forgery. Ryan's plan had been to use Miranda as a pawn, but now, naturally, he finds himself falling hard for her. While the two search for bronzes, a standard-issue romance-novel psychotic is stalking them. Most readers will twig to the killer's identity: Here, as always, Roberts's sexual tension is more compelling than her suspense. Perhaps it's time to take a sabbatical from the pink sweatshop and turn her considerable wit and narrative skills to a more original piece of work.
Pub Date: March 23, 1998
ISBN: 0-399-14387-4
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1998
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