A colorful but overly complex origin story of thrills, kills, and strong wills.
A luxurious and lethal spa provides the setting for this debut thriller.
Most people wouldn’t accept an anonymous gift of a weeklong stay at an exclusive resort. But when former college professor and divorcée Charlotte “Charley” Anderson receives a calligraphed invitation to the famous Rancho Verde Spa in Santa Fe, she simply asks, “What time is check-in?” The hard-drinking New Yorker identifies herself as “new money.” A horrific accident 10 years ago scarred her physically as well as emotionally, but it also provided her with a multimillion-dollar settlement. However, her college fired her when it was revealed that she’d been having an affair with 19-year-old student Mark Bailey Elliot III. At the resort, Charley discovers that Mark’s late mother, Margaret, used to be a frequent visitor. She also finds out that Margaret and numerous other guests apparently became hooked on pills before committing suicide. Mark, who’s now married and living in Dallas, hasn’t seen Charley in a decade, but he still considers her the smartest woman he ever knew. He proves to be the financier of her spa stay, and he asks her to find out inside information about the place, which he thinks is linked to his mother’s death. PI Nash Pope, who speaks Spanish and some Navajo, also helps. Divorced Charley’s heart beats faster at the thought of being with Mark again, but a kidnapping alters those plans. The author gets points for delivering a flawed, feisty protagonist in this series starter: “Charley carried her scars like some people carry a .45—hidden, only brought out when needed.” Readers will also find the multicultural cast of characters to be welcome, and Long’s descriptions are vivid, detailing such things as a New Mexican landscape (“The soft colors of the sage and sand were backlit by the brightness of the red rock formations and the incredible blue of the sky”) and a pair of designer stilettos. The plot, however, is distractingly convoluted; even Charley marvels at everything she’s gone through.
A colorful but overly complex origin story of thrills, kills, and strong wills.Pub Date: June 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9991810-8-9
Page Count: 218
Publisher: Yellow City Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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