A teacher champions women’s liberation in the ’60s by stepping into the role of detective with guile and efficacy.
When a woman inherits a house, she must contend with both a ghost and a murder she’s determined to solve in this mystery.
Twentysomething Jesse Graham is ready to be independent. She’s moving to a small town in 1968 New York, where her inheritance from Aunt Helen awaits: an old, dilapidated home. It’s not ideal, but it’s a way to escape her indifferent mother and cheating ex-fiance, Robert Cronmiller. Jesse secures a teaching gig at St. Bartholomew’s, thanks to her nun friend Maggie, and sets about taking care of the house’s substantial mouse population. After befriending locals, including neighborly Joe Riley, Jesse’s shocked to learn that Helen’s death 20-plus years ago wasn’t an accident, but a suicide. She’s inclined to believe rumors of murder, however, once she suspects late-night noises in the house are Helen’s spirit asking for help. Jesse launches her own investigation, with assistance from cop Marty D’Amato, to prove someone killed her aunt. Her snooping and mingling with the townsfolk have made at least one individual skittish, as someone runs Jesse’s ’65 Beetle off the road and later leaves her a threatening note. She may be unfazed by the ghostly presence in her home, but an evil of the flesh-and-blood variety is something to fear, especially in light of a more recent murder. Meyette’s (Love’s Spirit, 2014, etc.) book starts as a ghost story but quickly becomes a mystery; any apprehension from the spooky dwelling, in fact, is immediately vanquished when Jesse declares herself unafraid. Nevertheless, a palpable menace generates suspense and a sense of urgency to track down Helen’s murderer(s). The protagonist’s desire to “depend solely on herself” isn’t entirely convincing, as she has a house, free and clear (with taxes paid by a trust), and a job Maggie practically hands to her. But her resolve as an amateur sleuth is admirable, and her reluctance to dive into a new relationship (considering how the last one ended) makes her wisely cautious. Jesse often subverts cynicism with humor: “It’s the living who haunt me,” she ominously asserts, before clarifying she means the house’s former rodent and arachnid residents.
A teacher champions women’s liberation in the ’60s by stepping into the role of detective with guile and efficacy.Pub Date: May 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4935-3096-0
Page Count: 318
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
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
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