ONLY LIVING WITNESS

Name: ONLY LIVING WITNESS
Author: Malcolm Forsythe
ISBN: 0-7278-5520-4

by Malcolm Forsythe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2000

Forsythe’s American debut under his own name, as much soap opera as mystery, collapses under a surfeit of red herrings,...

bookshelf

When Helen Forman decides to remodel the house her father Eddie gave her, the builder uncovers a corpse murdered 25 years ago. At first, Chief Inspector Millson and Sergeant Scobie think the murder has nothing to do with the current occupant. A closer look at the blueprints, however, shows that it occurred while Helen's aunt and uncle, Piers and Mary, lived in the house with three teenaged foster children. Was the corpse one of the children? The answer is not easy to find: Helen and her siblings never knew Piers and Mary Forman, and now they’re both dead. Even her father, now suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, was estranged from Piers throughout Helen’s life. What’s needed is a second corpse, and one obligingly turns up, naked and drowned, at Dengie Flats. With some help from a peeping Tom, Scobie traces a yacht spotted just off the beach the night of the murder to Greg Henderson, who leases it to Helen's brother Bobby—and has another, more intimate connection to her family. Then Bobby and the yacht are blown up, leaving his stepmother, though not his wife, grieving. Days later, Eddie is suffocated. In the end, the last living witness to the 25-year-old murder turns up, and Millson just manages to keep her from being the last victim.

Forsythe’s American debut under his own name, as much soap opera as mystery, collapses under a surfeit of red herrings, illicit sex, and selfish twits. By the time the least likely character is neatly revealed as the murderer, few readers will care.

Pub Date: June 1, 2000

ISBN: 0-7278-5520-4

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Severn House

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

bookshelf

DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

bookshelf

Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.

After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).

Pub Date: July 1, 2002

ISBN: 0-345-45071-X

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

bookshelf

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

bookshelf

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.