An elaborate but exhilarating mystery spotlighting an entirely capable heroine.
An American teacher in 1957 Turkey becomes unwittingly entangled in murder and political unrest in this thriller.
When Anna Riddle gets a telegram from her brother-in-law pleading for help, she flies to Ankara, Turkey, without hesitation. She’s caring for her 8-year-old niece, Priscilla, while career diplomat Henry Burkhardt and Anna’s half sister, Mitzi, are on a Kenya safari. Watching Priscilla isn’t easy for childless Anna. But it turns altogether unnerving when the girl runs ahead at Atatürk’s Tomb and encounters a man Anna doesn’t know—who’s soon a gunshot victim. Bizarrely, the man’s gripping a letter Anna once wrote to her fiance, Rainer, presumed dead 12 years ago near the end of World War II. Detective Veli Yaziz is suspicious of Henry (the dead man wears one of the diplomat’s suits) and, by association, Anna. Yaziz’s boss, however, wants him to forgo the murder case in favor of thwarting an alleged plot against the Grand National Assembly. A discussion on that very scheme is what Meryem Alekci, a Romani, overhears while dancing at a retired general’s palace, putting her in danger. Anna, believing Rainer may be alive, is shocked by a potential second murder and a subsequent kidnapping. Star (Trouble in a Politically Correct Town, 2017, etc.) and Beatty’s (Hell Down Under, 2017, etc.) dense plot is rife with suspense, stemming primarily from Anna’s distrust of most people surrounding her. Even young Priscilla is dubious, since it’s clear she’s withholding information from her aunt. Anna’s motivation for investigating is plausible: she discovers further links to Rainer, as well as Henry and Mitzi, and catches quite a few lies from a range of culprits, including the authorities and the Burkhardts’ neighbors. Anna is also a resourceful protagonist who transcends individuals undermining her; Yaziz is certain she’s hiding something because she fails to become hysterical after seeing a body, “as he would expect most women to do.” Sharp perspectives from Anna, Meryem, and Yaziz make the myriad other characters alarmingly enigmatic and, as a result, any villains hard to define.
An elaborate but exhilarating mystery spotlighting an entirely capable heroine.Pub Date: June 27, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9893578-7-6
Page Count: 440
Publisher: D.M. Kreg Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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