Set aside a block of time to read the 12th in Lister’s series (Blood Oath, 2016, etc.), for it may be impossible to put...
A Florida prison chaplain with investigative experience reopens an ice-cold case that will change his life forever.
John Jordan’s troubles start with a phone request to rescue his drunken brother, Jake, from a bar. Jake used to be a deputy for his father, Jack Jordan, sheriff of Potter County. When Jack lost his re-election bid, both father and son were thrown out of work and feeling lost. But Jack has kept himself busy looking at cold cases, most recently the matter of beautiful, popular high school senior Janet Leigh Lester, whose car was found soaked in blood but whose body was never found. John’s relations with his whole family, especially his father, have been difficult, but when he learns that Jack has cancer, he agrees to help him review the case, which scarred many lives. Jack suspected but could never prove that Janet was a victim of Ted Bundy, who was rampaging through northern Florida at the time and was even spotted at a gas station where Janet stopped the night of her disappearance. Many thought her boyfriend, Ben Tillman, was the real killer, protected because his father, the sheriff of Jackson County, called on his friend Jack to take over the case. Nobody has a bad thing to say about Janet. Her friends loved her; her stepfather, Ronnie Lester, thought she was an angel; she helped Verna, her frail mother, care for Ralphie, her mentally and physically disabled brother; and she was active in school, church, and the 4-H club. Her death left behind a group of people torn by suspicion and guilt. Despite the difficulties involved in solving a 40-year-old case, John is determined to help his father, unaware of how high the price will be.
Set aside a block of time to read the 12th in Lister’s series (Blood Oath, 2016, etc.), for it may be impossible to put down. Conflicted characters and a shocking solution add up to an enthralling experience.Pub Date: May 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-888146-70-7
Page Count: 274
Publisher: Pulpwood Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
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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