The author tests her sleuths in this grim and engrossing series entry.
In this fourth volume of a series, two private investigators tangle with their own tortured pasts while hunting a serial killer.
Toronto gumshoes Samantha McNamara and Reece Hash are engaged. Reece has decided to finish law school, which has left him feeling overextended and short-tempered. When they decide to hire help for their firm, only one candidate shows up, a young man named Elijah Watson. Sam immediately distrusts his stiff movements, stilted speech, and the odd cigarette burns on his wrist. Nevertheless, Eli fixes Reece’s malfunctioning computer on the spot, so they hire him. Though Sam and Reece continue to fall out of sync emotionally, she preoccupies herself with a new case of ritualistic murder in which a University of Toronto freshman’s corpse was posed naked like a statue and his eyes were replaced with black stones. This coincides with the disappearance of college student Bart Walsh, brother of Margaret, the firm’s intern. Margaret says that Bart’s new girlfriend, Angelina “Angel” Stuart, is a rude, manipulative wild child with a questionable past. Making matters worse is the serial killer Incubus, whom Sam helped catch and place in the Millhaven Institute. He’s been writing her flattering letters to get inside her head and bring friction to Sam and Reece’s already strained relationship. In her latest outing with the two private eyes, Fraser (Red Rover, 2016, etc.) pays homage to Thomas Harris’ Hannibal Lecter by making Incubus learned, slimy, and dangerous even behind bars. She fuels the plot with increasingly sadistic secrets, one of which props up the tension between Sam and Reece (“ignoring her was his new modus operandi, along with his grumpy demeanor and argumentative attitude”). Careful details about the murders, like the staging of victims during foul weather to ruin forensic evidence, are impressively geeky. And Fraser doesn’t let fans down during grisly flashbacks, as a warehouse fire leaves Incubus with “strands of charred hair” drooping “across one wide blue eye that stares sightless from bubbling flesh.” Though this story can be enjoyed alone, readers may want to experience the series’ natural progression.
The author tests her sleuths in this grim and engrossing series entry.Pub Date: June 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9947742-5-5
Page Count: 404
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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