The late-blooming mystery runs a very distant second to the interesting and extremely detailed descriptions of artwork,...
A group of goth friends plan a Halloween shindig that will turn out even more special than they can know.
Ellen Rosings is the owner of the very Victorian Wisteria Tearoom in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her office manager, Kris Overland, is dating sexy, talented, charismatic artist Gabriel Rhodes, who’s planning a party based on “The Masque of the Red Death.” The tearoom, which has a reputation of being haunted, has already been the scene of several murders (A Bodkin for the Bride, 2015, etc.). At the planning meeting, Ellen is introduced to some of Gabriel’s friends. Several of the women are striking and talented; all of them are Gabriel’s former lovers. Ellen is struck by the contrast between Gabriel and her sometime boyfriend, Detective Tony Aragon, a pragmatic cop with no time for the arts and a jealous streak. At an art show, Ellen admires Gabriel’s rather disturbing work and learns that some of it will be shown at a Canyon Road gallery, the pinnacle of Santa Fe artistic success. The tearoom will be transformed into the setting for the Poe story, and the guests will wear costumes to fit the theme. Even a party hosted by one of Ellen’s chefs to paint sugar skulls for El Dia de los Muertos fits right into the macabre theme. All goes well until Halloween night, when disaster strikes, leaving Ellen and Tony to clean up the mess and catch a killer.
The late-blooming mystery runs a very distant second to the interesting and extremely detailed descriptions of artwork, costumes, and Santa Fe.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61138-610-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Book View Café
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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