The characters and motivations lack balance, but the storytelling and Daly’s voice are top-drawer.
Daly’s debut novel explores how interpersonal relationships wax and wane following the disappearance of a local child.
Lisa Kallisto is one of those overworked, overscheduled mothers who never secure enough sleep at night. After getting her three kids off to school, working all day as the manager of a charitable animal shelter and taking care of her household, she’s lucky to get a few minutes to herself. So when her daughter’s friend Lucinda turns up missing after she was supposed to spend the night at Lisa’s home, Lisa is full of blame and self-loathing. And she’s not the only one who finds herself at fault: Most of Lucinda’s family, the police and even her own husband, Joe, think Lisa should have paid more attention to what the two young teens were doing. Now, it looks like the kidnapper, who has already abducted one other girl, is at it again, and Lisa is trying to put the pieces together. So is Joanne Aspinall, an investigator with the local police in the small English town where both Lisa’s and Lucinda’s families live, and Joanne’s finding that things are growing more and more curious as the pieces to the puzzle refuse to fit together. Daly has a nice writing style: It’s casual, readable and full of natural-sounding dialogue. Readers will like Lisa, the protagonist, but most likely be puzzled at her insistence (and that of others around her) that it’s all her fault. That hole in the basic premise doesn’t constitute a fatal flaw, but if Daly really wanted Lisa to have her hands dirty, she could have made her part in the proceedings stronger. As it is, readers may find themselves puzzled over the degree of angst and self-recrimination that hovers around Lisa throughout the book. And Joanne, although likable, comes off as weak and sports an irritating habit of turning her phone off, meaning she misses vital calls.
The characters and motivations lack balance, but the storytelling and Daly’s voice are top-drawer.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2162-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
As in summer movies, a triple dose of violence conceals the absence of real menace when neither victims nor avengers stir...
Dr. Alex Cross has left Metro DC Homicide for the FBI, but it’s business as usual in this laughably rough-hewn fairy tale of modern-day white slavery.
According to reliable sources, more people are being sold into slavery than ever before, and it all seems to be going down on the FBI’s watch. Atlanta ex-reporter Elizabeth Connolly, who looks just like Claudia Schiffer, is the ninth target over the past two years to be abducted by a husband-and-wife pair who travel the country at the behest of the nefarious Pasha Sorokin, the Wolf of the Red Mafiya. The only clues are those deliberately left behind by the kidnappers, who snatch fashion designer Audrey Meek from the King of Prussia Mall in full view of her children, or patrons like Audrey’s purchaser, who ends up releasing her and killing himself. Who you gonna call? Alex Cross, of course. Even though he still hasn’t finished the Agency’s training course, all the higher-ups he runs into, from hardcases who trust him to lickspittles seething with envy, have obviously read his dossier (Four Blind Mice, 2002, etc.), and they know the new guy is “close to psychic,” a “one-man flying squad” who’s already a legend, “like Clarice Starling in the movies.” It’s lucky that Cross’s reputation precedes him, because his fond creator doesn’t give him much to do here but chase suspects identified by obliging tipsters and worry about his family (Alex Jr.’s mother, alarmed at Cross’s dangerous job, is suing for custody) while the Wolf and his cronies—Sterling, Mr. Potter, the Art Director, Sphinx, and the Marvel—kidnap more dishy women (and the occasional gay man) and kill everybody who gets in their way, and quite a few poor souls who don’t.
As in summer movies, a triple dose of violence conceals the absence of real menace when neither victims nor avengers stir the slightest sympathy.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2003
ISBN: 0-316-60290-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2003
A thriller that fails when it turns to the supernatural.
A Harvard freshman investigates the suicide of her schizophrenic brother and finds herself chasing a conspiracy and hearing the voices of the dead.
Cady Archer is determined to attend Harvard even though her beloved older brother, Eric, killed himself there. Considered a genius in math and science, Eric suffered from schizophrenia but had stopped taking his prescriptions, and his yearlong mental health spiral into paranoia and delusion still haunts Cady and her parents. Cady is attending Harvard against her mother’s wishes, but she’s driven by a need to understand what happened the night Eric died. Her quest leads her to a handsome, seductive friend of Eric’s, the professor with whom he was working on a secret project, and something more troubling: voices in her head. Is Cady suffering from schizophrenia, too? Or are the voices she’s hearing truly ghosts, real people who once lived on the Harvard campus and faced their own dilemmas there? The question of Cady’s mental health is interesting, and Serritella—best known for the essay collections she writes with her mother, thriller writer Lisa Scottoline (I See Life Through Rosé-Colored Glasses, 2018, etc.)—brings the famous campus to life in a vivid way. She also effectively explores the aftermath of loss and grief on a family. But Serritella is on shaky ground once the story veers into the supernatural. Cady’s conversations with the ghosts are tiresome and ultimately don’t add much to the narrative. In fact, they detract from what could have been a solid psychological thriller. Her conversations with Bilhah, a slave who is terrified her son will be sold away from her, feel uncomfortably like pandering. The book is repetitive and far too long, and though the endgame strives to shock readers with twists, it's ultimately unsatisfying.
A thriller that fails when it turns to the supernatural.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-51036-9
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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