A fast-paced, smoothly told thriller.
In this mystery thriller, a convicted criminal is set free after becoming a cause célèbre—but it turns out that the woman who orchestrated his release has a hidden agenda.
This media-drenched age is full of causes: Save the whales, find the child, don’t eat certain foods, free the wrongly convicted. The latter is the theme of Finley’s debut novel, which opens with Sabbath Dyme of Little Rock, Arkansas, awaiting execution following his conviction for murdering two children. His case had all the earmarks of a wrongful prosecution—bad lawyers; ignorant jurors; a clueless, teenage defendant—and several celebrities have been advocating for his release. However, the effort seems stalled until a local Little Rock woman named Dawn Daniels forms a high-profile nonprofit organization dedicated to setting him free. After Sabbath is ultimately set free, he marries Dawn and moves to an exclusive neighborhood in Little Rock. One night, however, the couple has an argument, and Dawn falls into a nearby pond. Afterward, it’s slowly revealed that her motives may not have been completely altruistic. This smart, lively mystery has engaging characters, snappy dialogue and enough surprises to keep readers interested. It repeatedly turns convention on its head; just when the characters’ roles seem clear, the author switches things up. Suddenly, the strong becomes weak, the guileless guilty, and the predator prey. This effect works especially well with a character named Connie, who starts off as an all-knowing neighbor but winds up a hapless victim. Similarly, the book starts by focusing on Sabbath but features him less and less as the story progresses, until he eventually becomes a mere supporting player. Finley keeps the book free of unnecessary subplots and resists the temptation to detour the story into extraneous detail. The result is a book that, like a racehorse, starts off strong, sprints in a straight line and doesn’t quit until the finish line.
A fast-paced, smoothly told thriller.Pub Date: April 5, 2014
ISBN: 978-0615953007
Page Count: 196
Publisher: Hannah K Finley
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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