A riveting novel ripped from the headlines of the Wall Street Journal.
Boston’s rising-star financial detectives McBain and O’Daniel uncover a scheme of fraud and murder in Masters’ debut mystery.
Masters’ story takes place in Boston’s downtown, near the financial district and in the wealthy suburb of Brookline soon after the financial meltdown and Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. Boozy McBain, a Wall Street trader–turned-detective, and his partner, Boston O’Daniel, a fiery redhead and the police captain’s daughter, reveal a talent for financial fraud investigation and for reaching large settlements with money managers who’ve scammed their clients. While celebrating his latest victory at his favorite watering hole, McBain meets Christina Baker, a 30-something raven-haired beauty with a sharp wit and even sharper tongue. His interests are purely social, but Baker has just lost her inheritance and her parents in an apparent double suicide; she wants her money back and justice. With mixed motives and strong reservations, McBain agrees to investigate the case on his own time. When O’Daniel discovers her partner’s off-the-books activities, she’s intrigued by the case and joins the paper chase. Although McBain and O’Daniel can’t find proof of criminal activity, their client presses, certain that her parents’ financial adviser, Roche is somehow involved. As the investigation turns up new leads, ties are made between her parents’ physician, Lehmann, and Roche. Pulling on the loose threads, the detectives begin to unravel an elaborate scheme of fraud, murder and personal betrayal in which greed, passion and family secrets hide behind proper appearances. Masters’ well-written story weaves together exquisite plot twists, believable characters and realistic dialogue, resulting in a story that flies by in vividly descriptive writing: In McBain’s favorite bar, “The room hummed softly to the engine of glass, ice, and conversation,” and in an exchange between Baker and McBain: “You do like your martinis….Why do you drink so many?” “They’re what some of us have instead of children.” A novel this good isn’t beginner’s luck; indeed, Masters’ consummate writing skills, his work on Wall Street and his experience living in Boston drive a most authentic storyline.
A riveting novel ripped from the headlines of the Wall Street Journal.Pub Date: March 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-0615956589
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Lost Haven Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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