A fiery, vividly drawn mystery, headlined by a particularly daring belly dancer.
A woman’s double life throws her friends and family into a murderous tailspin.
This debut novel, the first in a planned mystery series, features hardworking Washington, D.C., heroine Jeanne Pelletier. Jeanne, a stuffy contract attorney by day, moonlights as an amateur belly dancer named Zahira at night. A free spirit at 28, she realizes that this alter ego affords her both the freedom to demonstrate her talent for dancing and a true release from the stress and strain of day-job doldrums. During a particularly challenging veil-dancing performance curated by Jeanne’s close, trusted mentor, Yasmina, a fire breaks out at nightclub Algiers and Yasmina is lost in the smoke and flames. Jeanne manages to extract Middle Eastern bar co-owner Ibrahim Abu Ali from the rubble, though he’s been fatally shot in the chest during the melee, a development that embroils her and city police detectives in a homicide investigation. Once the crime is established, the real sleuthing begins, and Jeanne’s slick, smart detective spadework fuels much of this whodunit. As Jeanne, aided by her best friend, Lily, digs deeper into arson allegations and Yasmina’s serpentine history, the attorney also uncovers financial woes for the club, bad blood between two Islamic co-owners, and a scheming sole heir to the family fortune. Her intimate partnership with Lily soon morphs into an enlisted cotillion of crime-solvers, including “ravishing” sister Vivienne and smitten Scottish cybersleuth Fergus McCarrick, both of whom become instrumental in solving the murder. But Jeanne’s encroaching personal skeletons remain unavoidable. Klover (In the Shadow of the Volcano: One Ex-Intelligence Official’s Journey through Slums, Prisons, and Leper Colonies to the Heart of Latin America, 2012) is a former U.S. intelligence analyst and political radio commentator. Especially adept at narrative pacing, a quality that can make or break mystery novels, she establishes a fine momentum right from the rousing first chapters. The tale also incorporates themes of stage performance anxiety (one night, as Zahira, Jeanne “just stood there, immobile. Her feet felt as though they were encased in lead”), Middle Eastern terrorism and Islamic culture, and prejudicial and racial unrest. These facets lend the story a certain sophistication and complexity.
A fiery, vividly drawn mystery, headlined by a particularly daring belly dancer.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-692-51763-5
Page Count: 346
Publisher: Chesapeake Books
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2016
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
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
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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