Vibrant imagery and an entertaining plot ending with a most unexpected twist.
An alchemist and first-century amateur sleuth returns and must rescue a kidnapped friend in the fifth installment in Trop’s (The Deadliest Fever, 2018, etc.) historical mystery series.
It is Feb. 26, 61 C.E., and Miriam bat Isaac bolts from her chair to answer the banging on the door of her town house in Roman-occupied Alexandria, Egypt. She sees her closest friend, Phoebe, badly beaten; within moments she crumbles to the marble floor. She dies in Miriam’s arms, mumbling the word “document.” Distraught, Miriam discovers her friend brought a tube containing a sealed, rolled parchment. With shock she learns the dead woman isn’t Phoebe but rather Phoebe’s hitherto unknown twin sister, Leda, who was raised in Crete. Leda was married to a brute, Pytheus, one of three cohorts who last year stole the jewels from the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus on the island of Crete. According to Leda’s sworn statement, Pytheus intends to have Miriam killed. The sleuth’s momentary relief that it is not her best friend who has just expired vanishes when Phoebe’s husband, Bion, arrives and tells her that his wife is missing—kidnapped, it turns out. A few days later, Miriam encounters the dwarf Nathaniel ben Ruben, a friend from earlier in the series. It seems he, too, is being stalked by someone who sounds very much like Pytheus. Once again, Trop pulls readers into the sounds, smells, colors, and foods of ancient Alexandria. The multifaceted mystery is intriguing, with engaging characters, although they will seem less fully developed to new readers than to established fans. But the real strength of Trop’s atmospherically rich book lies in her ability to transport her audience to a distant time and place, seamlessly sprinkling her prose with period-appropriate Greek and Latin terminology and offering descriptive details that bespeak solid research: One scene has a table laden with “trays of stuffed olives, boiled eggs, and candied almonds; a platter of the cook’s specialty, thin slices of grilled lamb in a fragrant mint sauce; and a salad of dandelion greens, berries, and melon balls.”
Vibrant imagery and an entertaining plot ending with a most unexpected twist.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64437-201-2
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Black Opal Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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
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