A captivating murder tale that kick-starts the beach reading season.
A detective duo returns to the streets of San Francisco for a second case in this thriller, the first installment of a series.
Rural Alaskan investigator Qiqiq, on loan to the San Francisco Police Department, is still partnered with the sexy-but-tough Kandy Dreeson when the duo is called in for an unusual probe for homicide detectives. That morning, an elderly Chinese woman was struck by a motorcycle while crossing the road. Though the woman is alive, one witness reports this was no accident: the victim was being targeted. While in the early stages of that investigation, the two are also tasked with tracking a missing lawyer. Between the two cases, Dreeson can’t help but grumble that, as homicide detectives, “there should be a body.” Meanwhile, on the other side of California at Lake Tahoe, a fortuitous coincidence brings together a street photographer named Joe Roberts and a beautiful Asian woman whom he happened to shoot months before in Michigan. Trying to play the good guy and find out more about this mysterious and irresistible figure—her name is Mylin, and she plays the viola in an all-Asian, all-female touring orchestra—pulls Joe into a spider web of secrets, sex, blackmail, and murder. Joe may be in over his head, but he’s not the only one entangled; between a motorcycle club involved with more than just classic bikes and a body count that teaches Dreeson to be careful what she wishes for, the two detectives have their work cut out for them if they want to catch the people triggering these events without getting burned in the process. Even though Klingler (Missing Mona, 2015, etc.) injects a few more hard-to-believe coincidences and auspicious events into his narrative, which allow certain aspects to wrap up more neatly than they should, he definitely knows how to tell an entertaining tale. Action-packed and thoroughly enjoyable, the book delivers two distinctive protagonists (“The visiting gumshoe whose Alaskan name no one can pronounce” and his attractive partner with “nearly six feet of gazelle-muscle” who prefers to wear “athletic clothes that didn’t hinder movement in an altercation”). Once again the author succeeds in spinning his story so well that readers can’t help but keep turning the pages to see its spectacular climax. Let’s hope book two arrives soon.
A captivating murder tale that kick-starts the beach reading season.Pub Date: May 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-941156-06-3
Page Count: 470
Publisher: Cartosi LLC
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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