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
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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