An engagingly nerve-wracking tale with gradually escalating suspense.
In Cory’s (Facade, 2016, etc.) latest series thriller, Boston architect and amateur sleuth Iris Reid faces off against an identity thief who becomes a dangerous stalker.
Although Iris makes her living in architecture, she’s previously worked with the police on murder and kidnapping cases. But her latest is her toughest one yet, as cops arrest her for an armed bank robbery that left a guard in critical condition. Security-camera footage from a car rental service shows someone, who certainly looks like her, renting the getaway car. Iris gets out on bail, but authorities don’t seem to buy her claim that her identity was stolen. Readers know that the thief is a woman named Rosica Bakalov, who later pushes her luck by looting Iris’ savings account and severely damaging her credit. Iris begins her search for Rosica by visiting an apartment that the thief rented in Iris’ name. Rosica becomes nervous when she realizes that her pursuer is getting close, but her anxiety soon turns into resentment. She believes that Iris has the life that she should have—including a handsome, successful chef boyfriend, Luc Cormier, whose new restaurant Iris is renovating. So the thief begins to shadow her victim, and her subtle attempts to torment the architect become more overt and increasingly hazardous. By introducing the character of Rosica early, Cory forgoes mystery in favor of suspense. She effectively provides insight into the villain’s mind, revealing it to be unstable and unpredictable. She also deftly establishes Iris as a woman who’s worried about her professional reputation, and introduces a subplot about a yoga instructor who may be a bit too hands-on with Luc. Meanwhile, the plot becomes more unnerving as it progresses, and an impressive twist leads to a lengthy final act featuring Rosica at her most ferocious. Iris, who eventually gets to use the karate that she often practices, is depicted as smart and tenacious, although it turns out that the identity theft is at least partly her own fault. Cory’s concise prose establishes a consistent pace that never wavers, and even her descriptions of architecture are exhilarating.
An engagingly nerve-wracking tale with gradually escalating suspense.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9853702-7-5
Page Count: 236
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2019
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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