MANDATED REPORTER

Name: MANDATED REPORTER
Author: J. Lea Koretsky
ISBN: 978-1-58790-316-8

by J. Lea Koretsky ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 1, 2015

Koretsky’s care over the grim details of Amanda’s investigations does nothing to dull the edge of her puzzles, although in...

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Child abuse investigator Koretsky, creator of the Dalton Keys thrillers (Blueprint, 2009, etc.), turns her hand to a subject near and dear to her in this trio of bruising novellas.

As an emergency response investigator for the Santa Isabel court system, Amanda Russo has seen human misery that almost defies description. In Mandated Reporter, former client Hilda Creede calls Amanda with a shocking claim that she’s just seen her teenage son, Cameron, sexually assaulting her younger son, Wharton. But a look into Cameron’s traumatic childhood reveals an unnerving sense of history repeating itself. The trauma in The Pink Balcony is more mental than physical. Reba Smithe runs away from the Halcyon House group home after being charged with stealing a valuable pin. But the more Amanda digs into Reba’s claim that the pin actually belonged to her mother, left over from the days when she partied in homes of the rich and famous, the more suspicious the investigator becomes of Halcyon’s owner, Dr. Baker, who brought the charges against Reba in the first place. Could Melinda, who brought Reba up in squalor, have owned such a fabulous jewel? Amanda also knows that abuse and neglect aren’t limited to the poor. In Grant’s Line, she searches for Roseann Cantrell, who disappeared from her family’s home after Pablo, the chauffeur, was shot to death. The Cantrells, who own Cantrell Pacific Lumber, write Roseann off: her mother, Elena, is too stoned to care and father Adam seems absorbed in the great family tragedy, in which his father, Hugh, murdered the man who killed Hugh’s father, Samuel. But can Roseann’s disappearance provide an alternate version of Samuel’s death?

Koretsky’s care over the grim details of Amanda’s investigations does nothing to dull the edge of her puzzles, although in one case, the end comes rather abruptly.

Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-58790-316-8

Page Count: 456

Publisher: Regent

Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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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.