bookshelf

VANISHED

Name: VANISHED
Author: Nancy A. Hughes
ISBN: 978-1-64437-001-8

From the Trust Mysteries series , Vol. 3

by Nancy A. Hughes ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 27, 2018

An engrossing read that’s built around a chilling premise.

bookshelf

In this final volume of Hughes’ (Redeeming Trust, 2017, etc.) mystery trilogy, a married couple’s infant son is kidnapped and police are convinced that they’re responsible for his disappearance.

Kingsley Ward—whose first husband was murdered in the series opener, A Matter of Trust (2017), and who was a target of the murderer’s accomplice in the second installment—has finally found happiness with Todd Hennings, the president of Keynote National Bank, in central Pennsylvania. Married less than a year, the couple just celebrated the christening of their first child. Kingsley returns to work at Keynote, where she runs the commercial lending department. The company has an excellent child care facility with extraordinary security precautions. However, someone still manages to get past all the cameras, witnesses, and protocols to abduct 10-week-old Billy Hennings. The cops believe that Kingsley and Todd are somehow involved, so the couple is left to their own devices to find their baby before it’s too late. As they investigate, Kingsley realizes that Billy may not have been the kidnapper’s original target. With the help of two friends—Barrie Brown and her significant other, Randall Shannon—Kingsley and Todd begin their own investigation, which soon has them flying around the country. Readers are privy to information that the protagonists lack, so the challenge isn’t in understanding the motives for the kidnapping—it’s in figuring out how the plan was executed, and here, some intriguing twists emerge. Hughes constructs a meticulous scheme that involves many different players, and she employs solid description and engaging dialogue to keep the narrative moving along. Although the book is part of a series, it works just fine as a stand-alone. Kingsley is a well-defined character, even without the recaps of earlier novels, although Todd is relatively underdeveloped. Barrie and Randall’s relationship provides entertaining moments of light relief from the frightening primary storyline.

An engrossing read that’s built around a chilling premise.

Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-64437-001-8

Page Count: 348

Publisher: Black Opal Books

Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2018

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

bookshelf

SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

bookshelf

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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

bookshelf

LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

bookshelf

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.