An overly complicated mystery with an engaging protagonist.
After a man is murdered in a Halloween haunted house, a psychic Midwest lawyer investigates the killing in this sixth installment of a series.
Thirty-year-old Megan Docket, an attorney in tiny Dexter, Nebraska, specializes in estate planning, but—as described in five previous novels—she has found herself investigating and solving criminal cases, most recently a double murder, and has killed many times in self-defense. She’s helped by a warm community of friends and family and by the supernatural: Megan is warned of danger by presentiments and voices she hears in the winds scouring the dry bluffs near her house. As the book opens, Megan is still traumatized by recent events, such as the loss of her unborn child, and is troubled by problems in her new marriage to Jay Young, a lieutenant in the State Patrol. In need of distraction, she agrees to help plan a haunted house for Halloween. Finally open to the public, the house becomes the site of a murder, and the sheriff arrests the wrong man. Megan and her allies set out to find the truth, leading to a dangerous confrontation with the real killers—who hold her mother and Docket Law employees hostage. To outwit them, Megan will need to muster her associates and mount a daring rescue. Bruce (Game Six, 2018, etc.) provides, as always, a strong sense of place, diverse characters, and a twisty mystery. The main investigation story is rounded out by domestic concerns, such as Megan’s worries about her new marriage. Contradictions in her character make her a complex subject, one as likely to protect herself with deadly force as to generously help others. But these strengths become overwhelmed by the tale’s giant plethora of names and relationships, which (even with effective exposition) overtake the storytelling, slow the pace, and burden readers with attempts to keep things straight. Book 5 provided a cast list, but this one has no such memory aid. In addition, the voices-in-the-wind plot element becomes a little tired, even perfunctory, in this outing, which doesn’t live up to previous volumes.
An overly complicated mystery with an engaging protagonist.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68731-846-6
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
