Debut suspense novel offering a sexually frank variation on Robert Nathan’s novel Portrait of Jennie, with pleasing results. Sutton spent nine years writing TV’s Cheers scripts. Thus, with a hero who writes a comedy series and is abetted by a tartly gay co-scripter in resolving his fantastic problem, one foresees a comedy melodrama with a second lead who does all the wisecracks. Carl Rooney, whose parents have died and who still lives in the family home in Glendale, works late with co-writer Kit, then drives home in the wee hours, only to find someone throwing gravel at his bedroom window. It’s his old high-school sweetheart Jesse and, as they did 17 years ago before breaking up, they make love out back in the greenhouse. And then Carl finds that Jesse, whom he hasn’t seen since high school, is mentally locked into those early years. She can—t remember anything that’s happened since, and acts as if they’re both teenagers—until Carl proves otherwise. The reader at first thinks this overly cute. But logic builds a real case for Jesse’s lapse and, with Kit’s help, they begin investigating her past. They discover that Jesse is the wife of a rich ex-chocolate manufacturer, and that she was lost at sea during a storm. Or so her husband, Martin Ackerman, and his brother Wes have said. But when Carl’s ex-wife Amanda puts Jesse under hypnosis, bits and pieces of returned memory point to either Martin or Wes (or both) assaulting her. Attempts are made on Carl’s life, and a further look into Jesse’s past turns up her feeble-minded mother in a nursing home. When Jesse’s memory fully returns, there’s a variety of unanticipated revelations. Will Jesse go back to her husband? And will she ever get over Carl’s dumping her during the worst moment of their teen years? Noirish whimsy offering a fleshed-out script with every element in place but Hitchcock.
Pub Date: May 25, 1998
ISBN: 0-399-14317-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1998
Agreeably credible lovers and a neat piece of home-restoration compensate some for the hokey hauntings on the bayou. Loyal...
A gumbo seasoned with ghosts, love, and murder on the bayou.
When 30-something Declan Fitzgerald of Boston, a successful lawyer and a member of a large and loving family, breaks off his engagement to very suitable Jessica, he knows he needs to change his life. Lawyering is not fun anymore, so, recalling Manet Hall, an old deserted plantation house he once visited with law school classmate and New Orleans native Remy, he buys the property and moves down south. Declan is also a gifted craftsman, a born decorator, and very, very rich. Soon, he meets beautiful Lena, who’s visiting her grandmother Odette, Declan’s friendly Cajun neighbor. Declan is as certain that Lena is destined to be his wife as he was that Manet Hall would become his home. But, surprise, Lena has a troubled past (like the house) and is determined to resist Declan’s courtship. While he suits Lena and works on the place, Declan experiences troubling dreams. It seems he’s actually reliving the novel’s parallel story, which took place in 1899. In that year, the maid, Abbey Manet (from whom Lena, coincidentally, is descended, and who married wealthy Lucian Manet), was raped and murdered by her brother-in-law Julian as she nursed her baby daughter. Her body was dumped into the bayou by her mother-in-law, who despised her. And grief-stricken husband Lucian, away at the time, being told that Abbey had run off, committed suicide. Now, in an unconvincing twist of gender and reincarnation, it’s Declan who hears a baby crying , experiences childbirth and rape as the reincarnation of Abbey, while Lena is Lucian. The two accept all this with equanimity, and, Manet Hall’s secrets revealed, it becomes the setting for predictable and much foreshadowed resolutions.
Agreeably credible lovers and a neat piece of home-restoration compensate some for the hokey hauntings on the bayou. Loyal fans will enjoy.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-14824-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001
A little slower-paced than the typical Roberts romantic mystery (Black Hills, 2009, etc.) but every bit as steamy. It may...
A dog trainer and a wood craftsman dance around love and danger in the Pacific Northwest.
Fiona Bristow is the only victim who got away from serial killer George Perry. Now a copycat, inspired and perhaps guided by the jailed Perry, is on her trail. After Perry murdered her fiancé, Fiona rebuilt her life as a dog trainer and search-and-rescue expert on lovely Orcas Island. She’s recently met talented woodworker Simon Doyle and his misbehaving puppy Jaws, and her dormant love life is about to revive as she and the reluctant Simon slowly build a complicated relationship. Though she’s done her best to overcome her fears and make herself whole again, this new series of killings, with herself as the ultimate target, can’t help but strain her nerves. As the police and FBI track the killer, a persistent reporter makes Fiona’s life more difficult by printing information about her life and location. Through it all, Fiona keeps working. As she continues to go on rescue missions with a team that may soon include Simon and Jaws, her friends help to keep her balanced. But ultimately it will be the trust she has built up with Simon and the talents of her dogs that will change her life forever.
A little slower-paced than the typical Roberts romantic mystery (Black Hills, 2009, etc.) but every bit as steamy. It may well add dog lovers to her legion of fans.Pub Date: July 7, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-399-15657-1
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2010
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