Middling for this venerable, well-regarded series.
Just what Lt. Eve Dallas needed to make Christmas in the 2050s complete: a visit from the wicked witch who made her life hell when she was in foster care.
The holiday season kicks off with Santa opening a window on an office party and taking a header onto the pavement 36 stories below, killing a bystander in a hard landing. It was drugs, his shocked coworkers admit to Lt. Dallas of New York Police and Security Department, who promptly collars the dealer and thinks she’s ready for anything. Well, one thing she’s not ready for is Trudy Lombard, the foster mother who terrorized the eight-year-old Eve back in Texas until she ran away. Now Trudy’s made the journey to the big city, her son Bobby and his accountant/bride Zana in tow, and she wants nothing more than to coo over her former charge, now world-famous as a homicide dick (Origin in Death, 2005, etc.), and incidentally to put the squeeze on Trudy’s billionaire husband Roarke. It seems that Trudy’s been following her protegée’s career with rapacious interest and is ready to go public with her every misstep on the way to success and celebrity. Roarke tosses her out with brusque counterthreats, of course, and when Eve pays her a call the next day to repeat the brush-off in person, she finds Trudy beaten to death in her hotel room. The setup promises to land Robb’s answer to the Jetsons in hot water—but it doesn’t, because they both have ironclad alibis and nobody believes they’d hire a hit. So the case at the center of the futuristic trimmings and the connubial romance comes down to nothing more weighty than figuring out whether Trudy’s relatives got rid of her, or whether the perp was some other survivor of her unique brand of nurturing who decided enough was enough.
Middling for this venerable, well-regarded series.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2006
ISBN: 0-399-15328-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2005
As the plot grows more complicated, it also sheds believability, leaving sex and witty banter to carry the day.
Brown (Mean Streak, 2014, etc.) ticks off the boxes that elevate her books to the bestseller lists in this sexy romantic thriller set in Texas.
Rock-jawed hero with a dark past: check. Strong-willed, beautiful woman who resists his charms: check. A Whitman’s Sampler of bad guys: check. And finally, a convoluted and not always plausible plot: check. In this latest outing, readers meet TV journalist Kerra Bailey, whose family was torn apart years ago by a hotel bombing that killed 197 people in Dallas. Just in time for the 25th anniversary, Kerra scores an interview with the notoriously private Maj. Trapper, who saved her life, among others, when he emerged from the blast to lead the survivors out of danger. There's an iconic, prizewinning photo of the major carrying a little girl from the wreckage, but the child has never been identified—until now, when Kerra goes public with the information that it was her. Just after they finish filming the interview in his home, the major is shot, and an injured Kerra escapes in the confusion. The major’s son, disgraced Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent John Trapper—a name M*A*S*H fans will appreciate—steps in, igniting a chain of events that leads to murder, intrigue, betrayal, and a series of dark revelations. As with most of Brown’s heroes and heroines, there’s palpable sexual tension between Trapper, whose taut rear occupies ample literary real estate, and Kerra, who when dealing with Trapper feels “like he’d lightly scratched her just below her bellybutton” when he’s not making her “pleasure points throb.” The complex plot plays out in a round of reveals that don’t always make a lot of sense, but that’s not why Brown’s fans read her books. They check in for the witty, pitch-perfect dialogue and fluid writing. A master of her genre, Brown knows how to please her most ardent readers but relies too often on the same basic formula from novel to novel.
As the plot grows more complicated, it also sheds believability, leaving sex and witty banter to carry the day.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4555-7210-6
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
Less chick-lit beach read than old-fashioned Joan Crawford tearjerker.
In Hilderbrand’s fifth Nantucket novel (The Blue Bistro, 2005, etc.), a vacationing college student arranges to meet with her mysterious godmother, a former restaurateur of renown, to learn more about her dead mother.
Despite ambivalence, 19-year-old Columbia sophomore Renata has become engaged to Cade. While visiting his wealthy family at their Nantucket summer home, she calls her godmother Marguerite and arranges to have dinner. Renata wants to know more about her mother Candace, who died on the island 14 years earlier. Renata does not realize that Marguerite was so overcome by guilt and despair after Candace’s death that she had a psychotic break, sold her very successful restaurant and has been living for years as an island recluse. The novel follows Renata and Marguerite’s lives hour by hour throughout the day leading up to the dinner Marguerite prepares for them. While shopping for the meal, Marguerite visits key people from her past who force her to relive what happened years earlier: how she met her long-time, part-time lover Porter, and through him his half-sister Candace, who became her dearest friend; how Candace fell in love and married Dan, owner of the Beach Club; how they had Renata and moved away; how in a moment of despair after Porter’s final rejection, Marguerite declared her love for Candace; how shortly thereafter Candace was hit by a drunk driver while jogging. Meanwhile, Renata is struggling against Cade’s insufferable mother and against her own attraction to the handsome houseboy. She calls her father to announce her engagement, subconsciously knowing Dan will come to the rescue. He does, but not before Renata has come face to face with near tragedy and run away to Marguerite, leaving Cade’s engagement ring behind. Dan, Marguerite and Renata finally reunite, truths are told and old wounds healed.
Less chick-lit beach read than old-fashioned Joan Crawford tearjerker.Pub Date: June 30, 2006
ISBN: 0-312-32230-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2006
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