Fans won’t care: It’s good, creepy fun from a pro who can practically write in the dark.
The mistress of sheet-wringing suspense (Falling Awake, 2004, etc.) scores with a sexy thriller set in Dunsley, a small northern California lake town still seething from a family murder 17 years before.
Irene Stenson was only 15 on the summer night she returned from an evening drive with best friend Pamela Webb to find the gunshot corpses of her parents on the floor of their lake house. The verdict at the time was that Dunsley police chief Hugh Stenson shot his wife and then himself, possibly in a jealous rage. The day after their funeral, an elderly aunt took the shell-shocked Irene away. Seventeen years later, Irene is a toughened reporter at an obscure newspaper elsewhere in California. She’s drawn back to Dunsley by an email from Pamela, whom she hasn’t seen since, asking to meet her to discuss “the past.” Trailed by Luke Danner, the curiously proprietary owner of the secluded lodge where she’s staying, Irene gets to her former friend too late; Pamela seems to have died of a drug overdose. Yet Irene is suspicious, nagged by the fact that Pamela had tried to contact her. She distrusts many of Dunsley’s inhabitants, from police chief Sam McPherson to the members of Pamela’s rich family, led by slick senator (and presidential aspirant) Ryland Webb. Clues open up as Irene runs into catty former acquaintances in town. She’s shadowed constantly by Luke, a likable ex-Marine who has suffered his own share of post-traumatic stress. Typically, Krentz provides her heroine with just enough independence to be daring, yet not so much as to seem hard or impervious to the attractions of her manly suitor. Characters move a bit too easily through these tidy pages, and it’s regrettable that Krentz switches POV to reveal the villains’ obvious intentions when readers are perfectly capable of figuring them out.
Fans won’t care: It’s good, creepy fun from a pro who can practically write in the dark.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2006
ISBN: 0-399-15305-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
Despite kilt-wearing characters right out of Brigadoon, Picoult (Picture Perfect, 1995, etc.) persuasively explores a mercy killing in a small Massachusetts town and the subject of spouses who love too much. Wheelock has been home to the tradition-upholding MacDonalds and their hereditary chieftains since the 18th century, when the clan fled Scotland after the British defeated them in battle. Each clan chief has inherited more responsibilities over time, and the current laird Cam MacDonald is, like his father before him, the local chief of police. Cam yearns to travel and, though married, finds wife Allie's devotion stifling. Allie, a florist, has in turn suppressed all of her own opinions and pleasures for the sake of making Cam, whom she adores, happy. As the story begins, another MacDonald, James, has demonstrated his overwhelming love for wife Maggie in a very extreme form: James turns himself in to cousin Cam after admitting that he has smothered Maggie at her request because she was terminally ill with cancer and could no longer stand the pain. While the quality and wisdom of James's devotion to his wife will be tried in public, Allie's love for Cam will also be tested as free spirit Mia arrives in town. Mia has been everywhere and seen all the places Cam dreams of; she is also a whiz with flowers and gets immediately hired by Allie. While Allie helps James's lawyer find witnesses who will attest to his devotion to Maggie (he's now being tried for murder), Cam and Mia have an affair. A heartsick Allie learns of it, throws Cam out, sells all of his belongings, and then tries to forget him. But true love is resilient, and Allie, like James, having learned the price of being ``the one who loves more,'' will now try for greater balance. Overly predictable characters aside, Picoult does manage this time to bring trendy, headline-grabbing themes to life. (Literary Guild alternate selection)
Pub Date: Aug. 13, 1996
ISBN: 0-399-14160-X
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1996
SEEN & HEARD
A scheming rival and an obsessive fan convince a TV star that she's a long way from Kansas—in more sudsy romantic suspense from Roberts (Honest Illusions, 1992). Deanna Reynolds and Angela Perkins are both smart, talented, attractive, and ambitious. The big difference between the two talk- show hosts is that Angela is an attention-hungry woman desperate to maintain her fading charms and worshipful audience at all costs, while Dee maintains her Midwestern values even as her Chicago-based show makes her a star and threatens Angela's in New York. Angela, who was once Dee's mentor, has never forgiven the younger woman for turning down her offer to come to New York with her. Even less forgivable is Dee's romance with Finn Riley, a footloose foreign correspondent and once Angela's lover. Finn, who coolly calls in exclusives from a crash-landing 747, shrugs off a bullet wound while he broadcasts live during a shootout, and indisputably earns the nickname "Desert Hunk" during the Gulf War, finds his match in the unbelievably beautiful, desirable, and sweet Deanna. While the two make seismic love on any available surface and Angela plots Dee's downfall in the ratings, a secret admirer (whose identity is more obvious than the author must have intended) writes her love notes. Then, one by one, he begins to kill off all the people who have hurt or betrayed her—and attempts to realize his insane dream of making Deanna entirely his own. A sexy hero whose no-nonsense presence cuts through the vapors and cattiness of the womenfolk and a convincing behind-the-scenes look at TV—both help make up for the weak humor, implausible plot, and trite glitz of this predictable novel.
Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0425190382
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1993
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