A well-crafted suspense procedural with promise and potential.
A swiftly paced murder mystery anchored by two charming, hardworking detectives.
Cassie Maltos, a troubled teenage shoplifter with a rap sheet, has issues with just about every authority figure imaginable. When she and her mother are discovered murdered in their home, juvenile probation officers Christian Vargas and Daniel O’Callahan are immediately assigned to investigate the double homicide. Vargas has a personal stake in apprehending the vicious murderer: She’s spent years coaching Cassie to avoid the manipulations of her thuggish boyfriend, Tommy Calander, and focus on her singing talents and long-term goals. Although Cassie’s father, Jim, is initially a prime suspect, author O’Rorke (Always Another Dawn, 2000) ably provides a bevy of other possibilities, including a mysterious man involved in the meth trade. Vargas, who attends psychotherapy sessions to process her traumatic childhood, sleuths the case like a pro, tailing some Mustang auto-club members and a teenage truant named Lilly Host, who offers up Cassie’s diary for leads. The detectives soon end up at the Desert Evangelist Church, whose communicants speak in tongues and where Cassie was a member of the church youth group. It’s led by slimy minister Jason Roads, a man with a rap sheet for indecency. As Vargas and O’Callahan probe further, they find their own lives in jeopardy. O’Rorke, a Washington state–based mental health therapist specializing in high-risk teenagers, knows her mystery’s terrain well and brings her expertise to bear on the labyrinthine plot. She also stokes some much-needed romantic tension between Vargas and the handsome, soon-to-be-divorced O’Callahan; her new beau, Matt, livens things up further. Although the action culminates in a conclusion that some readers may find overly complicated, this inaugural entry in the author’s new mystery series is a creatively conceived, rousing whodunit.
A well-crafted suspense procedural with promise and potential.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2013
ISBN: 978-0615834733
Page Count: 374
Publisher: Torena O'Rorke
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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