A brutally realistic look at the devastation hurricanes cause neatly melded with a mystery that keeps you guessing.
A detective sweats to solve a murder as a killer storm bears down.
John Jordan—sheriff’s investigator, prison chaplain, recovering alcoholic, doting husband and father—(Bloodshed, 2019, etc.) is called to check on Andrew Irwin, a retired Catholic priest, after an anonymous tip claims he’s dead. Before he reaches Irwin’s former mission church, he receives a panicked call from Carla, the babysitter whose inability to cut ties with her addict father, who drops in at will, puts both Jordan’s daughters and her own son in danger. Finally arriving at the church, he finds Irwin dead and Mary, his beloved mastiff, missing. There are no signs of violence, but there’s a sweet-smelling plastic cross in Irwin’s mouth. The manager of a nearby hardware store who saw Irwin the day before looking dizzy and pale sent Levi, one of her employees, to walk him home. Irwin evidently died a painful death from drinking antifreeze, an odorless, sweet-tasting liquid easily masked in many drinks. Irwin was a quiet man who had few enemies, none of whom seemed to dislike him enough to kill him. But Jordan conscientiously looks into every possible suspect before the approach of Hurricane Michael sidelines his investigation. Before he can pack off his wife and children to her mother’s inland home, a hysterical Carla calls to tell him that while she slept, her father took all three children with him to check on his brother in Mexico Beach. Driving through unimaginably difficult conditions to the devastated beach town, Jordan enlists help from a pair of wannabe storm chaser twins who desert him just as he finds the girls. Feeling lucky to be alive, he returns to his ravaged town to ponder a murder that seems to have no motive.
A brutally realistic look at the devastation hurricanes cause neatly melded with a mystery that keeps you guessing.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-947606-36-4
Page Count: 342
Publisher: Pulpwood Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
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
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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