Lister (Blood Work, 2017, etc.) packs this fast-paced thriller with plenty of social commentary and tops it off with a...
A Florida expert at clearing cold cases meets his match.
John Jordan is both a prison chaplain and an investigator for the Gulf County Sheriff’s Department. Reporter/blogger Merrick McKnight, the partner of John’s boss, Sheriff Reggie Summers, wants John to help him and another friend, Daniel, a retired professor of religion, solve a tough case. Merrick and Daniel have been recording a true-crime podcast on the disappearance of 21-year-old Randa Raffield in 2005. Randa was a student at the University of West Florida, a beauty and champion swimmer whose car was found hundreds of miles away from the Pensacola rally she was supposed to be attending. She’d been in a minor accident, but truck driver Roger Lamont, who arrived on the scene moments later, testified that she seemed fine and did not want him to call the police. Worried about her safety, he called anyway, and when the police arrived less than seven minutes later, Randa had vanished and has remained unseen despite a massive search. Agreeing to help, John listens to all the podcast episodes he’s missed to bring him up to speed. Merrick and Daniel had managed to get interviews with most of the people in Randa’s life: her father, her most recent boyfriend, some college friends, and true-crime blogger and podcaster Nancy Drury, who the men invite to add a female viewpoint. Theories abound concerning the young woman who’d graduated from childhood abuse by her aunt’s boyfriend to drug and alcohol use and plenty of sex: Randa was suicidal; she was picked up and killed by a stranger or someone she knew; she ran off to a new life. Despite threats from someone claiming to be the killer to everyone involved in trying to solve the case, John becomes obsessed with finding the truth, something the self-proclaimed killer tells him will never happen.
Lister (Blood Work, 2017, etc.) packs this fast-paced thriller with plenty of social commentary and tops it off with a lollapalooza of an ending.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-888146-71-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Pulpwood Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 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
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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