A rigorously written and rousing murder mystery fueled by aggressive plotting and stocked with effervescent youth.
A teenager’s disappearance in an airport sets off a dramatic chain of events surrounding an escaped killer and some hard-won truths about love and possession—and how both can have disastrous consequences.
Forensic psychologist Kane (Legacy, 2016, etc.) parlays her knowledge of and experience with criminal behavior and trauma victims into this novel marking the first in the Doctors of Darkness series. The story features recent high school graduate Samantha “Sam” Bronwyn and her plucky best friend, Ginny Dalton, who travel to San Francisco for a post-school romp against her mother’s wishes. The girls’ dream escape vacation falls apart quickly when Ginny, wearing Sam’s basketball tournament jacket, seemingly vanishes from an airport bathroom without a trace, save for her cellphone. It displays a short message somehow involving Sam’s mother’s name, Clare. Befriending handsome fellow passenger Levi Beckett somehow softens Sam’s anxiety about her missing friend, though an escaped murderer from San Quentin named Cutthroat Cullen wanders the Bay Area undetected and frightens everyone citywide. Cryptic phone messages, a possible mistaken identity, and the determination that Sam was actually the abductor’s intended target are developmental plot points all smartly set against a moody, treacherous, foggy San Francisco backdrop. Adding romance to intrigue is Sam’s smoldering attraction to Levi and his “leather and soap”–scented swagger. As Cullen continues his murder spree across the city in the present day, Kane masterfully weaves in flashback chapters that fill in the killer’s homicidal history with a prison psychologist, who she really is, and how she became ensnared in his deadly head games. As both narratives run parallel to each other and the puzzle pieces begin to fall into place, the author tosses in a few surprises—just enough to keep readers on their toes and the guessing game between Sam and Levi tightly drawn. Because the book is fast-paced and gripping, careful attention is required to absorb the tale’s abundance of crucial details. Though the action is consistently busy, everything ends up gelling nicely in the compelling novel’s final third when the search for Ginny intensifies and the clock ticks down toward a final showdown. This feverishly drawn thriller places Kane’s clever control of crime fiction and knack for memorable characters on full display.
A rigorously written and rousing murder mystery fueled by aggressive plotting and stocked with effervescent youth.Pub Date: June 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-692-88096-8
Page Count: 358
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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