by Ellen Berenson ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 26, 2014
A straightforward, ultimately satisfying story about a middle-aged woman rediscovering passion on an international adventure.
Berenson’s debut novel explores the worlds of antiques dealing, traveling and the difficulties of sustaining a decadeslong relationship.
Travel agent Joan and her freelance journalist boyfriend, George, have been living together in New York City for over 20 years and in a boring rut for about half that. Joan’s love for Asian art leads her to purchase what she believes is an incredibly valuable Chinese vase, which she gives to her friend Mark for safekeeping. Shortly thereafter, she decides to buy a plane ticket to Istanbul, temporarily putting a stop to her floundering relationship with George, leaving him with only a terse note in their apartment. Before she leaves for her trip, she sells a plane ticket to a dark, handsome man named Anthony Malfeaso, who later mysteriously turns up on her world travels. Joan’s determination to change her life doesn’t preclude having an affair, but is Anthony whom he seems? More importantly, why did Joan’s latest vase go missing from her friend’s apartment? With its direct, plainspoken prose—“Wait a minute, I reflected as I ate, what am I thinking? This is all happening so fast”—and linear plotting, the book has a tendency to oversimplify character interactions. For all of their flaws, characters aren’t very dynamic, which has a flattening effect on scenes that could be underscored by tension and suspense. As Joan’s interactions with Anthony become more complex, her one-foot-in-front-of-the-other approach to life tends to take away the mystery of how the situation will ultimately resolve itself. That means, for better or worse, that Berenson doesn’t leave any loose ends. On top of that, the tendency to use unimaginative declarative sentences slows the book’s narrative pacing considerably: “What was most important was that he was a very smart scholar. He often helped me identify pieces. I respected his opinion. He knew I was trying to learn from him and that I eventually wanted to be a dealer. We had met at one of the many classes I had taken. He was the teacher.” However, once these initial obstacles are scaled, the book’s tour through deception, theft and the renewal of passion makes for a decent read.
A straightforward, ultimately satisfying story about a middle-aged woman rediscovering passion on an international adventure.Pub Date: June 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-1496122025
Page Count: 276
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 8, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by J.A. Jance ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 2, 2019
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...
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A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.
Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how little the boundary-challenged AI, who gets into the case more or less inadvertently, differs from your standard human sidekick with issues.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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by Patricia Cornwell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 23, 2007
Proceed at your own risk.
Pioneering pathologist Kay Scarpetta (Trace, 2004, etc.) goes up against a wraithlike killer whose self-appointed mission is to “relieve others of their suffering.”
Practice, practice, practice. If only 16-year-old South Carolina tennis phenom Drew Martin had stuck to the court instead of going off to Rome to party, her tortured corpse wouldn’t be baffling the Italian authorities, headed inexplicably by medico legale Capt. Ottorino Poma, and the International Investigative Response team, which includes both Scarpetta and her lover, forensic psychologist Benton Wesley. But the young woman’s murder and the gruesome forensic riddles it poses are something of a sideshow to the main event: the obligatory maundering of the continuing cast. Wesley still won’t leave Boston for the woman he tepidly insists he loves. Scarpetta’s niece, computer whiz Lucy Farinelli, continues to be jealously protective of her aunt. Scarpetta’s investigator, Pete Marino, is so besotted by the trailer-trash pickup who’s pushing his buttons that he does some terrible things. And Scarpetta herself is threatened by every misfit in the known universe, from a disgruntled mortician to oracular TV shrink Marilyn Self. Cornwell’s trademark forensics have long since been matched by Karin Slaughter and CSI. What’s most distinctive about this venerable franchise is the kitchen-sink plotting; the soap-opera melodrama that prevents any given volume from coming to a satisfying end; and the emphasis on titanic battles between Scarpetta and a series of Antichrists.
Proceed at your own risk.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-399-15393-8
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007
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