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A FOLD IN THE TENT OF THE SKY

Name: A FOLD IN THE TENT OF THE SKY
Author: Michael Hale
ISBN: 0-688-15757-2

by Michael Hale ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 7, 1998

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The universe reels in this perfectly titled debut novel as a group of psychics gathers to help the government, and one of them starts altering the present by stripping the past. Peter Abbott, an actor of little promise but of huge psychic talent, is bought out of his stage contract by Calliope Associates, a clandestine group of psychics assembled to gather information available through no other source but the third eye. Then he’s shipped to the Caribbean, where Calliope trains new members in OBEs (out-of-body experiences), remote viewing, and psychometry (reading objects by touch). Also on hand are Pamela Gilford, who can sight-read the immediate future by looking at someone; Simon Hayward, who alters the present by will power and erases the past by preventing someone’s conception; Larry McEwan, who can project images onto film; Gordon Quarendon, a dowser, or water diviner; and Ron Koch, whose skills include reading the Racing Form for winners. Their training supervisor, Mike Blenheim, has them study a photograph taken in 1843, a second copy of which has recently appeared with an added figure dressed in later-styled clothes. How does the universe heal itself of such time-paradoxes? Ron Koch soon oscillates between two probabilities in his lifeline, implodes, and leaves a gap in the group. Few members remember him as the universe zips up its loss. Simon diverts Linda Kasabian from murdering Sharon Tate, who makes a long list of movies. He smothers Quarendon as a baby in his crib, erasing him from the breakfast table before Peter’s eyes—and no one else remembers him. Then Simon zaps Larry—no more Larry. Then Anita Spalding, psychic detective, vanishes. Then Pam becomes only a vague after-image on Peter’s mind. Simon has his losses, too, as his beloved Beatles’ albums—and Madonna—vanish in the rewired universe. Then Simon goes after Peter’s mother back in 1962. Well-written and absorbing, although the psi research is overly familiar.

Pub Date: Oct. 7, 1998

ISBN: 0-688-15757-2

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998

Categories:

MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE

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A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

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Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

Pub Date: March 17, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
COLD, COLD BONES
by Kathy Reichs

- BOOK REVIEW
THE BONE CODE
by Kathy Reichs

- BOOK REVIEW
TWO NIGHTS
by Kathy Reichs

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THE WINNER

by David Baldacci ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 2, 1997

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Irritatingly trite woman-in-periler from lawyer-turned-novelist Baldacci. Moving away from the White House and the white-shoe Washington law firms of his previous bestsellers (Absolute Power, 1996; Total Control, 1997), Baldacci comes up with LuAnn Tyler, a spunky, impossibly beautiful, white-trash truck stop waitress with a no-good husband and a terminally cute infant daughter in tow. Some months after the birth of Lisa, LuAnn gets a phone call summoning her to a make-shift office in an unrented storefront of the local shopping mall. There, she gets a Faustian offer from a Mr. Jackson, a monomaniacal, cross-dressing manipulator who apparently knows the winning numbers in the national lottery before the numbers are drawn. It seems that LuAnn fits the media profile of what a lottery winner should be—poor, undereducated but proud—and if she's willing to buy the right ticket at the right time and transfer most of her winnings to Jackson, she'll be able to retire in luxury. Jackson fails to inform her, however, that if she refuses his offer, he'll have her killed. Before that can happen, as luck would have it, LuAnn barely escapes death when one of husband Duane's drug deals goes bad. She hops on a first-class Amtrak sleeper to Manhattan with a hired executioner in pursuit. But executioner Charlie, one of Jackson's paid handlers, can't help but hear wedding bells when he sees LuAnn cooing with her daughter. Alas, a winning $100- million lottery drawing complicates things. Jackson spirits LuAnn and Lisa away to Sweden, with Charlie in pursuit. Never fear. Not only will LuAnn escape a series of increasingly violent predicaments, but she'll also outwit Jackson, pay an enormous tax bill to the IRS, and have enough left over to honeymoon in Switzerland. Too preposterous to work as feminine wish-fulfillment, too formulaic to be suspenseful. (Book-of-the-Month Club main selection)