A smart, steadfast gumshoe who, in her second book, continues to flourish.
An amateur sleuth initiates her own investigation when she believes the drowning of her sister’s childhood friend, a competitive swimmer, is anything but accidental in this thriller.
Fortyish Trisha Carson is working part time at a ballpark and living with her younger sister, Lena, near San Francisco. Trisha also helps out at a swim clinic led by her sister’s friend Shari Grantner, where Lena is an instructor. After hearing of Shari’s death by reputed drowning, Trisha suspects foul play, particularly once she learns the body shows signs of struggle. She’s confident enough to look into the possible murder herself; after all, she solved a swimming-related homicide just last year. This time, there’s a slew of potential killers: Shari’s little brother, Mitch, threatened her for keeping him from the family fortune, and her relationship with boyfriend Duncan had been dwindling. Clues, meanwhile, roll in, including a pile of X-rated photos and the mysterious man appearing in some. Things get dicier when a stranger accosts Trisha and warns her about her nosiness, followed soon thereafter by a second death—another apparent accident. Trisha is nonetheless determined to find a murderer and hopefully without injury to herself or someone she knows. Carroll’s (Dead in the Water, 2013) writing bounces off the page, as even non-swimmers will easily grasp the aquatic details (Each time Lena “flip turned at my end of the pool and streamlined off the wall, I could see her anxiety fade”). Trisha has a curious back story: Dad abandoned the family over two decades earlier and her husband voluntarily but inexplicably disappeared. Her equally unusual investigative method involves making a copy of Shari’s apartment key and snatching a few of the dead woman’s (pertinent) things. But while the suspect list and distrust among characters run entertainingly high, the plot is occasionally muddled. An individual’s arrest, for example, doesn’t entail a murder charge, which Trisha contradicts later, and the narrative ends with a still unclear motive for a killing.
A smart, steadfast gumshoe who, in her second book, continues to flourish.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9991109-0-4
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Beachbreak Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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