This series, now up to three, just keeps getting better, and readers will surely anticipate the protagonist’s next outing.
In Larew’s (Aftermath, 2017, etc.) thriller, Lee Carruthers’ latest case takes her to Hong Kong to check on her ex–CIA boss’s contact.
Though Lee no longer works for Sidney Worthington, she agrees to see if anything is amiss with his friend and Hong Kong contact Henry Wong, who hasn’t made contact in nearly two months. Unfortunately, almost as soon as Lee makes it to Wong Antiques, she spots two strangers leading Henry away. She tails them but gets caught in a frenzied mob of democracy demonstrators. She learns the men took Henry to a bar owned by the criminal triad group Chau Fong. But Lee can’t immediately link the antiques dealer to anything illicit that would involve the triads. Henry’s son, Percy, is equally perplexing. Cops arrested him during the demonstrations (along with others, including Lee), but now Percy, like his dad, is missing. Lee pokes around bank accounts and makes inquiries, but her investigation turns personal when she uncovers a decades-old connection between the Chau Fong and both Sidney and her late father, Bill. The questions only build when there’s another disappearance, followed shortly thereafter by a murder. Larew maintains a relatively simple mystery, which effectively juggles Lee’s multiple predicaments. Her romantic entanglement with Secret Service agent Jim Sanders, for example, is inhibited by his apparently jealous partner, Jennifer Evans. Lee, whose former job entailed tracing criminal money, is meticulous and plainspoken, both of which are often reflected in her dialogue. When someone asks her about Bill, Lee responds, “He’s dead,” or a terser “Dead.” However, she’s formidable in countless ways, from catching men watching or shadowing her to fighting off an assailant via impressive self-defense tactics (and that’s even before she can reach her Glock 26). The story has several worthy twists, though a couple of those are rather bleak.
This series, now up to three, just keeps getting better, and readers will surely anticipate the protagonist’s next outing.Pub Date: Dec. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9910912-9-4
Page Count: 378
Publisher: Artemis Hunter Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2018
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
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
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