Won’t disappoint readers looking for a solid thrill ride.
The case of a murdered groom takes a detective to unexpected places.
A beautiful country wedding outside New York City turns grisly when the groom, wealthy and well-connected Henry Fullington, falls from the church’s bell tower only moments before the beginning of the ceremony, his body already “torn apart like a rag doll.” A missing best man, a hidden bag of cocaine and a crime scene trampled by panicked guests are all waiting for police officers when they arrive. Then Xavier King arrives, driving “his SL 550 Roadster into the parking lot with seemingly no rush in the world.” X, as his colleagues call him, is a suave, handsome and brilliant detective who commands the respect and admiration of everyone around him, even when he’s arrived in shorts straight from his boat. Yet this high-profile murder pits him against pressure from the governor’s office, local park police trying to overstep their bounds and a rising body count. Soon, X makes the disturbing revelation that more than one person might have been after Henry that day—and that’s only the beginning of complications he’ll face trying to catch Henry’s killer. Double crosses, crooked cops, a diabolical former lover, and a surprising conspiracy spanning all the way to Italy and involving St. Benedict all come into play as the case evolves at a rapid speed toward an exciting finale. Fans of blockbuster thrillers like Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code or the works of James Patterson will appreciate this book’s similar hero and global scope. Leatherbury packs a lot of surprises and action into short, compulsively readable chapters, and by the end, the story has covered a wide range of characters, locations, conspiracies and multiple murders. Fortunately, Leatherbury keeps the threads from becoming confusing or contradictory. Narration can be clunky, though, because of redundant information or too many irrelevant details, such as constant references to the designer brand names everyone is wearing. But she also packs in some genuine surprises and shocks sure to satisfy thriller fans.
Won’t disappoint readers looking for a solid thrill ride.Pub Date: July 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-0615996806
Page Count: 312
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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
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