Flora’s compassion and tenacity make her a savvy and series-worthy detective.
In O’Day’s debut thriller, a Texas nurse risks her career—and her well-being—when she looks into mysterious infant deaths at a local hospital.
Flora has been at Gulf Regional in Corpus Christi for only a year, but she knows the hospital’s recent infant mortality rate is unusually high. Most of the mothers who’ve lost infants are illegal immigrants with no prenatal care. One of these women, Estella Hernandez, confronts Flora outside the hospital, claiming her baby is still alive and that someone stole him. An empathetic Flora promises to help and, checking the morgue, finds no record of Estella’s child or the name of another deceased infant. She confides in fellow nurse and friend Jaymee but is reluctant to tell anyone else, including her boyfriend, Dean, a hospital supervisor. Police are out of the question as well, as they’re likely to threaten Estella with deportation. Flora surmises that the financially strapped hospital is selling babies but hopes her snooping won’t result in her termination. Soon she faces another menace: A truck tailgates her late one night, and someone slips a threatening note under her condo door. The danger mounts with a more direct assault against Flora, who’s evidently too close to a discovery. O’Day deftly crafts tense scenes at Gulf Regional as Flora sneaks into the morgue and a colleague’s office. The medical environment is appropriately spooky: The elevator is a “large metal box,” the hallway a “virtual ghost town.” Act 2 centers on Flora in overt peril; it’s less atmospheric but still engaging as the protagonist continues to unravel the mystery. Flora is appealing, earning sympathy with her woeful backstory. Her jailed mom and absent father effectively left her with no family and understandable trust issues. Romance, meanwhile, is gleefully complicated; Dean thinks he has competition from “strikingly handsome” officer Rob, a cop Flora may be able to rely on.
Flora’s compassion and tenacity make her a savvy and series-worthy detective.Pub Date: May 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-71736-113-4
Page Count: 266
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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