Promise lurks inside this entertaining, wordy and densely populated mystery of unsettled spirits and family ancestry.
A mysterious death and ghostly sightings stir up a small Illinois town.
A muddied, dead body turns up at the intersection of Dell Road and the Jesse Kay Memorial Bridge in Billins, Ill., a sleepy hamlet renowned for its mysterious, unexplained occurrences. The corpse turns out to be that of Peter “Stinky Pete” Weldon, an aging, reformed town troublemaker. To most of the citizens, including the police, his death doesn’t come as a surprise since Weldon and his family had many run-ins with the law, as well as “connections to unusual and unexplained events.” The news startles local veteran police chief, William “Goots” Killen, who learns that the cause of Weldon’s demise is inconclusive except for a few defensive cuts and bruises. Word travels fast, and the death renews statewide interest in Billins, especially for Chicago-based, paranormal-obsessed, newspaper reporter (and possible mobster’s daughter) Connie Danci, who heads into town to uncover the truth. Eyewitness Janet Beverly reported seeing an apparition near the bridge where Weldon was found. Locals know this vision as the “ghost girl,” the spirit of Elizabeth Finney, a young child who had died 50 years ago on the Kay Bridge. Meanwhile, haunting dreams and strange happenings torture Weldon’s daughter, high school sophomore Jessica Lyons, who has her own personal demons to sort, thanks to a violent past and a shady family. Amid old secrets, haunted houses, unearthed bones and devil dogs, the story introduces a host of extraneous townsfolk (even in its final pages) and sheds light on Dell Road’s otherworldly hokum through chapters of lumpy prose. Though McNabb could have pruned his narrative down for clarity and character cohesiveness, the chugging plot keeps the reading lively.
Promise lurks inside this entertaining, wordy and densely populated mystery of unsettled spirits and family ancestry.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2007
ISBN: 978-0595702701
Page Count: 373
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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