Another good entry in this series, starring a thoughtful, earthy heroine who’s a magnet for danger.
This fourth mystery in a series pits a psychic Nebraska attorney against local racists.
For a small-town lawyer, Megan Docket leads a dramatic life. She hears eerie voices of the dead in the wind that sweeps through the dry, rugged land of Dexter, Nebraska, and she gets strong premonitions of trouble to come—and there’s always trouble, it seems. Megan has “killed four men in the last four years, which must be a record for Nebraska attorneys under the age of thirty.” It was self-defense, but sadly, the most recent attack killed Megan’s unborn baby and destroyed her marriage. This time, trouble starts when a burning cross is set aflame on her land, apparently to intimidate Megan’s family friend/father figure, James Wilson, 65, one of Dexter’s few black citizens. He suffers a stroke, which brings friends and family to town for help. Megan’s uncle brings along Raz and Nori Peters, Lebanese Christians like Megan’s maternal side of the family, who are lying low after political troubles at home. As Megan forms a Night Posse to investigate the cross burning (and additional hate crimes), she becomes uneasily attracted to Raz. When another death occurs, Megan is arrested. Events build to a violent confrontation with a dangerous killer as James’ health worsens. Though Megan uncovers several truths, her experiences severely test her faith in friends and God. As in her previous novels, Bruce (Cries In the Wind, 2016, etc.) presents a distinctly realized, fully populated world. At times, the welter of names and interrelationships can become daunting, but Bruce provides good exposition to help keep track. Megan’s personality interestingly combines practicality and ruthlessness with thoughtfulness and deep compassion. She’s good at her job, skilled with a gun, serious about her faith, appreciative of hot men, and generous with money. Bruce keeps the plot moving at a crackling pace, and the action nicely intertwines with Megan’s personal crisis regarding James’ living will and tragic losses she’s suffered.
Another good entry in this series, starring a thoughtful, earthy heroine who’s a magnet for danger.Pub Date: April 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-57638-622-4
Page Count: 268
Publisher: Merriam Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2018
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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