It's no surprise that somebody has shot cantankerous Old Murdo Heminson, Sir Peter Hay's tenant farmer at Easter Coullie Farm. After all, he'd never gotten along with his older son Brett; he'd quarreled with Brett's brother, Young Murdo, over his romance with Sheila McKee, the neighboring farmer's daughter; he'd tricked local jack-of-all-trades Duggie Bracken with a postdated check for services rendered; and—in this slim tale's opening and most telling episode—he'd just made an enemy of new veterinary assistant Jean Mather by the spectacularly unhelpful way he'd retrieved her runaway car from a silage pit. No, the mystery isn't why somebody would murder Old Murdo, but how, since Inspector Ian Fellowes can't explain how a mere air-gun pellet penetrated the thick part of his skull with enough force to kill him. It's obviously a case for Fellowes's father-in-law, gunsmith Keith Calder, and until he gets back from a trip with his wife and daughter to wrap up the case without even pausing for breath, his friends have little to do but suggest possible weapons that could have made the wound (a .22 rifle? a nail gun?) and recover the body of Young Murdo from a poisoned hole in the ground. Pleasantly matter-of-fact about violent death, but still no more than a barely extended anecdote—as Hammond (Curse of the Cockers, p. 176, etc.) acknowledges in a candid endnote. Of interest mainly, it would seem, to other alert gunsmiths.
Pub Date: Dec. 13, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-11339-0
Page Count: 144
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
Above-average formula fiction, making full display of the author’s strong suits: sense of place, compassion for characters...
Female rivalry is again the main preoccupation of Hannah’s latest Pacific Northwest sob saga (Firefly Lane, 2008, etc.).
At Water’s Edge, the family seat overlooking Hood Canal, Vivi Ann, youngest and prettiest of the Grey sisters and a champion horsewoman, has persuaded embittered patriarch Henry to turn the tumbledown ranch into a Western-style equestrian arena. Eldest sister Winona, a respected lawyer in the nearby village of Oyster Shores, hires taciturn ranch hand Dallas Raintree, a half-Native American. Middle sister Aurora, stay-at-home mother of twins, languishes in a dull marriage. Winona, overweight since adolescence, envies Vivi, whose looks get her everything she wants, especially men. Indeed, Winona’s childhood crush Luke recently proposed to Vivi. Despite Aurora’s urging (her principal role is as sisterly referee), Winona won’t tell Vivi she loves Luke. Yearning for Dallas, Vivi stands up Luke to fall into bed with the enigmatic, tattooed cowboy. Winona snitches to Luke: engagement off. Vivi marries Dallas over Henry’s objections. The love-match triumphs, and Dallas, though scarred by child abuse, is an exemplary father to son Noah. One Christmas Eve, the town floozy is raped and murdered. An eyewitness and forensic evidence incriminate Dallas. Winona refuses to represent him, consigning him to the inept services of a public defender. After a guilty verdict, he’s sentenced to life without parole. A decade later, Winona has reached an uneasy truce with Vivi, who’s still pining for Dallas. Noah is a sullen teen, Aurora a brittle but resigned divorcée. Noah learns about the Seattle Innocence Project. Could modern DNA testing methods exonerate Dallas? Will Aunt Winona redeem herself by reopening the case? The outcome, while predictable, is achieved with more suspense and less sentimental histrionics than usual for Hannah.
Above-average formula fiction, making full display of the author’s strong suits: sense of place, compassion for characters and understanding of family dynamics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-312-36410-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2008
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
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