CROSS AND BURN

Name: CROSS AND BURN
Author: Val McDermid
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2204-9

by Val McDermid ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 22, 2013

McDermid earns her customary high marks for planting clues, mastering procedural detail and maintaining suspense as the net...

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The abrupt departure of DCI Carol Jordan leaves the Bradfield Metropolitan Police ill-equipped to deal with a killer whose targets bear a truly unsettling similarity to one another.

Unwanted by the police and shocked by the failure of consulting psychological profiler Dr. Tony Hill to prevent the murders of her brother, Michael, and his lover, Lucy (The Retribution, 2012), Carol has retired to the solitude of the country to rehab Michael’s barn. In her absence, someone has kidnapped, raped, tortured and murdered Bartis Health representative Nadia Wilkowa and now evidently is to follow suit with pharmacist Bev McAndrew, whose husband is stationed in the Mideast and whose son Torin, 14, has been left very much on his own. The breakup of Carol’s Major Incident Team has ended Tony’s consultancy with the Bradfield CID and banished Carol’s friend DS Paula McIntyre to the Skenfrith Street station, where DCI Alex Fielding rules with a hand more authoritarian but altogether less inspired than Carol’s. Paula reaches out first to Tony, then to Carol in an attempt to mend fences and incidentally enlist their help. And help is badly needed to answer two pressing questions: Why does the kidnapper favor women who look so much like Carol? And, given the way the forensic evidence is pointing, could the kidnapper conceivably be Tony, acting out his estrangement from Carol by attacking surrogates for her?

McDermid earns her customary high marks for planting clues, mastering procedural detail and maintaining suspense as the net closes. As usual, however, the endlessly fraught relationships among the continuing characters are the real draw.

Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2013

ISBN: 978-0-8021-2204-9

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly

Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SILENT BONES
by Val McDermid

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QUEEN MACBETH
by Val McDermid

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PAST LYING
by Val McDermid

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

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THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.

The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.