Though Boyarsky adds nothing to currently raging debates about sexual assault, readers whose appetites for he-said, she-said...
A third appearance for Nicole Graves, now a rookie investigator for an LA firm, revolves around a virginal student’s accusation that she’s been raped by her Christian college’s star athlete.
Though she didn’t say anything for two months after she had sex with quarterback Doshan Williams, Mary Ellen Barnes is talking plenty now. Fortified and financed by Women Against Rape, she now says Doshan forced her, and she wants to tell her story in a Santa Monica courtroom. Until she doesn’t, maybe because Nicole’s provided limited protection from the paparazzi who stalk Mary Ellen, maybe because she doesn’t want to be cross-examined about such intimate details by George Goodman, Doshan’s attorney, maybe because, as she tearfully tells Nicole one night, she’s lying through her teeth, turning a consensual encounter into an accusation of rape at the behest of an anonymous blackmailer who’s threatened to ruin her life, complete with a steamy online video, if she doesn’t. Which story Mary Ellen has told is the truth? Before Nicole can investigate, her charge runs off and is soon found murdered when the tide under Santa Monica Pier reveals her inadequately buried body. End of story—or it would be if Doshan weren’t promptly arrested for Mary Ellen’s murder, leading Nicole, who’s repeatedly promised her fiance, architect Josh Mulhern, that her involvement with this unsavory case will end, to probe more and more deeply into the facts, leaving Josh outraged and fans of the series (The Bequest, 2017, etc.) utterly unsurprised. Now that the author has sprung her best surprises, her moves become less fast-paced, more conventional, and less compelling, and the mystery isn’t so much wound up as allowed to run down.
Though Boyarsky adds nothing to currently raging debates about sexual assault, readers whose appetites for he-said, she-said haven’t been sated by the spate of recent #MeToo headlines are invited to prolong their engagement just a little bit longer.Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61153-254-8
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Light Messages
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
An overly anodyne attempt at Southern gothic.
A series of unfortunate errors consigns a Baltimore nurse to a loveless marriage in the South.
It’s 1943, and Tess, from Baltimore’s Little Italy, is eagerly anticipating her upcoming nuptials. Her frustration grows, though, when her physician fiance, Vincent, accepts an extended out-of-town assignment to treat polio patients. On an impromptu excursion to Washington, D.C., Tess has too many martinis, resulting in a one-night stand with a chance acquaintance, a furniture manufacturer from North Carolina named Henry. Back in Baltimore, Tess’ extreme Catholic guilt over her indiscretion is compounded by the discovery that she’s pregnant. Eschewing a back-street abortion, she seeks out Henry in hopes of arranging child support—but to her shock, he proposes marriage instead. Once married to Henry and ensconced in his family mansion in Hickory, North Carolina, Tess gets a frosty reception from Henry’s mother, Miss Ruth, and his sister, Lucy, not to mention the other ladies of Hickory, especially Violet, who thought she was Henry’s fiancee. Tess’ isolation worsens after Lucy dies in a freak car accident, and Tess, the driver, is blamed. Her only friends are the African-American servants of the household and an African-American medium who helps her make peace with a growing number of unquiet spirits, including her mother, who expired of shock over Tess’ predicament, and Lucy, not to mention the baby, who did not make it to full term. The marriage is passionless but benign. Although Henry tries to be domineering, he always relents, letting Tess take the nurses' licensing exam and, later, go to work in Hickory’s historic polio hospital. Strangely, despite the pregnancy’s end, he refuses to divorce Tess. There are hints throughout that Henry has secrets; Lucy herself intimates as much shortly before her death. Once the polio hospital story takes over, the accident is largely forgotten, leading readers to suspect that Lucy’s death was a convenient way of postponing crucial revelations about Henry. Things develop predictably until, suddenly and belatedly, the plot heats up in an unpredictable but also unconvincing way.
An overly anodyne attempt at Southern gothic.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-08727-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Middling for this fine series, which automatically makes it one of the season’s highlights.
Fired from his job as Game and Fish Warden after wrapping up his colorful sixth case (In Plain Sight, 2006), Joe Pickett returns to nab the perpetrator of the perfect crime.
According to his own confession, small-time lawyer Clay McCann, feeling bullied and insulted by four campers he encountered in Yellowstone Park, shot them dead. A ingenious technicality he’s discovered, however, prevents him from being tried and convicted. Wyoming Governor Spencer Rulon, a former prosecutor, can only slap McCann’s wrist, but he’s determined to figure out what Rick Hoening, one of the victims, meant by an email that hinted at secrets that could have a major impact on the state’s financial health. So he asks Joe, now working as foreman at his father-in-law’s ranch, to poke around the park while maintaining full deniability for the Governor. The situation stinks, but Joe’s so eager to get away from his wife’s poisonous mother and go back to his old job that he agrees, and in short order there’s a spate of new killings to deal with—some committed by McCann, some not. As usual, there’s little mystery about which of the sketchy suspects is behind the skullduggery. But, as usual, the central situation is so strong, the continuing characters so appealing and the spectacular landscape so lovingly evoked that it doesn’t matter.
Middling for this fine series, which automatically makes it one of the season’s highlights.Pub Date: May 10, 2007
ISBN: 0-399-15427-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2007
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