A riveting thriller and a welcome third installment of a series; the author is definitely a writer to watch.
This novel poses two tantalizing questions: What happened to a young investigator, and why are people in Half Moon, Vermont, having mysterious health problems?
Jude Brannock, a senior investigator at the animal rights group The Kinship, has given Tim Mains an undercover assignment: Infiltrate the facility at Amaethon Industries and, if the company is flouting the Animal Welfare Act, document it. Tim is not only a rookie, but also Jude’s sometime lover. When reports from him suddenly stop, a worried Jude is off to Half Moon. Right off the bat, she is told that Tim has seduced young Heather Buck and introduced her to heroin (Jude is incredulous, rightly so). But drugs are definitely a big thing in little Half Moon, and soon Jude is nosing around that dangerous scene. Meanwhile, residents are showing up with heavy bruising, nosebleeds that won’t stop, and similar afflictions indicative of blood thinners. Oh, and Jude is having attacks of vision loss. Animals are suffering at Amaethon, but that may not be the worst of it. There may be a biotech disaster connected to the company’s experiments with “plant made pharmaceuticals.” The trials may have somehow gotten out of control. Could the PMPs be causing the rampant hemorrhaging? Jude eventually figures out who is to blame for the medical crisis and tries to bring the bad guys to justice in the hair-raising final chapters. What most impresses in Lamont’s (The Trap, 2015, etc.) third volume of her Kinship series is that things and people are not what they seem. Could Tim be a double agent? And then there’s Heather: The Bucks think that their daughter is innocence personified. A drug dealer named Bobby Gravaux is no saint, but is he a killer? Jude even suspects kindly Dr. John Harbolt of wrongdoing. So the author does a remarkable job of keeping readers off balance. Lamont also clearly explains PMPs, a plot point that involves real-world science, not fiction, and teases readers with the side issue of Jude’s periodic blindness. In addition, the author can deftly summon up a clipped style that reveals character as much as subject. Here Lamont describes a black mutt: “Very thin. Very fearful. And in this state, very dangerous.”
A riveting thriller and a welcome third installment of a series; the author is definitely a writer to watch.Pub Date: May 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9858485-8-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Grayling Press
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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