Part mystery, part romance, part adolescent fantasy, the latest from Tremain (Sacred Country, 1993, etc.) features a 13-year-old English boy who turns supersleuth when his first love, a much older best-selling writer, is kidnaped in Paris. Young Lewis Little’s frostily beautiful mother Alice, a translator, has been summoned to Paris for the summer to live with popular romance writer Valentina Gavrilovich and work on her new book, so Lewis comes along to sharpen his French. It’s not his language skills that grow, however, but his lust as he’s captivated by the rounded form and exotic qualities of his Russian ÇmigrÇ hostess. While Alice begins an affair, leaving him to his own devices, Lewis focuses his overcharged imagination, like a heat-seeking missile, on Valentina. . . but then she disappears. Alice is content to report the matter to the police and resume her liaison, but Lewis sets out to save the woman he loves. Thinking at first that her Russian lover somehow dragged her back to Moscow, Lewis soon picks up another trail by piecing together clues from Valentina’s housekeeper, her neighbor, and the files on her computer (which he reads before the police take them away). He gets close enough to her to receive a threat, and when that doesn’t deter him, he’s abducted himself. Held captive in the same rundown farmhouse as his love, Lewis makes the most of the chance to have her all to himself, talking nonstop with her through a hole in the wall between them while he plans their escape. Unfortunately, his fantasy-come-true in confinement fades in the harsh light of subsequent events. An adolescent world emerges here that is wonderfully complete, melding with adult preoccupations in ways both subtle and seductive. The result is riveting.
Pub Date: June 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-374-28666-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 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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