An entertaining visit to Dick Francis-land that runs the master a highly respectable second.
The plot of a fictional murder mystery comes unnervingly to life in a cleverly plotted tale with equestrian connections that falters only in the home stretch.
Gideon Turner and his wife Bea love horses. Until he was fired in a business downturn, Gideon worked for an agency that sold them to well-heeled clients, so it’s only natural that he should write a thriller with a horsy setting. The book is a bestseller, and Gideon is about to write another when he gets a letter from a man who addresses Gideon as Nathan Crosby, the murderer in Gideon’s novel. In a second letter, the writer claims he has chosen his first victim. The police are skeptical until Kate Winslow, the wife of a popular trainer, is found strangled with a Hermes scarf—just as Gideon’s first fictional victim was. As the body count mounts, meticulously following Gideon’s storyline, a jockey is abducted, then shot with a Luger, and a young female stablehand is killed off with a hatpin. In a series of phone calls, the man, now calling himself Harry, not only insists that he and Gideon are in this together but reveals a great deal of knowledge about Gideon and Bea, the kind of information that only an insider or close friend would have. As the police investigate Gideon’s associates, from his publisher (who is pleased with the notoriety) to a nosy neighbor, the murders continue until only one potential victim is left: the novelist's wife. Life for Bea, a spunky sort, is suddenly difficult and dangerous, but the police turn out to be not only less bumbling than usual but way ahead of aspiring sleuth Gideon.
An entertaining visit to Dick Francis-land that runs the master a highly respectable second.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-75283-694-3
Page Count: 293
Publisher: Orion/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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