I raced through this fat book. My advanced reader's copy is 553 pages and I read it in a very short time because I couldn't stand not knowing what would happen next. I was so scared for the victims.
You know from the beginning that a man with a psychosis of some sort is keeping two women in cages in a cellar. He seems to be fixated on women who have a similar appearance and he keeps calling the current favorite Sam. When she tries to tell him that isn't her name, he gets enraged and takes it out on the other one. When he takes a woman he is armed with a stun gun and chloroform, so she's aware she is being kidnapped but unable to do anything about it. Can you imagine how terrifying that is?
The cop heading the investigation is D.I. Sean Corrigan from the Murder Investigation Unit in South London. His own past history gives him intuitive insight into the motives of psychotic murderers. He is quite a strange investigator as he tries to get into the mind of such people to solve the case and catch the killer. Thankfully he is married to a doctor who loves him enough to bear with him during his cases, keep up with her own job, and care for their three children. His family is what saves him from going off the deep end himself.
Ordinarily a story featuring a mentally ill villain is tough for me to read, but I was so caught up in this one that I just couldn't put it aside without finishing it. If you read this one, and I encourage you to do so, brace yourself for a tense time. You might also want to lock your doors.
Highly recommended
Source: HarperCollins
I'm enjoying Marcia Clark's series featuring prosecutor Rachel Knight and I think this is the best of the three I've read. In this one Knight is prosecuting a case involving Hollywood's glitterati and the odds are definitely against her. You can read between the lines where she has gleaned as much as possible from her own experience in the O. J. Simpson trial where it is appropriate to her fictional plot. That makes the story even more interesting in my opinion. She has also given Knight a young handsome attorney for second chair in the trial who comes from the very Hollywood background she is investigating. He's a welcome addition to the team.
The plot involves the daughter of a super famous director. She is missing and it turns out her boyfriend is gone as well. Her father has received a ransom demand and took the money to the place the kidnapper specified but he still doesn't have his daughter back. Then, too late, he calls the authorities. With all the people who hang around his mansion, assistants, his wife, etc. and an ex-wife in the picture, there is no shortage of suspects. They all have motives since the director has trampled many feet getting to where he is. One of his most trusted friends and advisors is Ian Powers, a former child actor famous for a television series everyone including Knight had watched.
I don't want to give away too much here but the case is a difficult one with lots of red herrings to trip up the reader. Rachel Knight does a lot less obsessing about what to wear, what to eat, and her on-again, off-again relationship with Graden in this book and I thought that improved the story.
As the case proceeds Knight can't help recalling her sister who was kidnapped and has never been found so she gets perhaps too caught up in the mystery of what has become of this young woman. However, that gives her the courage to press on when everyone, including the district attorney, are seemingly against her. Of course, faithful investigator Bailey and fellow ADA Toni are by her side to the end.
Recommended
Source: Netgalley
I've stewed over this review for several days, not quite sure how I feel about this book. It is the story of the disappearance of a 14 year old girl named Marley, the reaction of her mother Rachel, and the actions of her father Paul. Marley had run away on purpose and we are with her while she's gone so we have the benefit of knowing where she is and what's happening in her life.
I sympathized with her parents of course. Who wouldn't? Paul takes charge and runs the search for his daughter like a political campaign. He's in his element and the publicity takes over his life. We wonder though, does he care about anyone but himself?
Despite my mixed feelings about Paul, it was Rachel who got to me like a fingernail scratched on a blackboard. She's completely dominated by both Paul and Marley. She has no self-confidence, has lived for many years as the family whipping boy, blamed for anything that goes wrong despite her best efforts. She had taken Marley to a therapist for her problems when they lived in San Francisco and then talked Paul into a move to a small town thinking that would ease the pressure on Marley. But she comes home that fateful day to find a message on the whiteboard in the kitchen: Don't try to find me . . .
Marley has made an immature decision that she will come to regret, but what will become of her parents' marriage and the family dynamic? Why does the therapist come back into the picture? Will they find Marley? Will something awful happen to her? That's what kept me reading despite my irritation with all three major characters.
I suppose the plot is well worked-out but I just wasn't on board with it all the way.
Source: publisher William Morrow
When HarperCollins offered to send me a copy of Remains of Innocence, I jumped at the chance to read and review it. I'll admit right off that I'm a huge fan of Jance, particularly her Sheriff Joanna Brady series set in southern Arizona. The background is that her husband had been sheriff. He was killed in the line of duty and then she was elected to the job herself. Turned out she liked it and is a great sheriff.
One of the things I like about Brady is how she copes with family issues and criminal investigations at the same time. Her daughter is nearly grown now and Joanna has remarried. Butch has launched himself on a new career as a writer, which is convenient since he's also a househusband, takes care of their little son, and they live on a ranch.
Obviously I know the regular characters well so it was difficult for me to discover one victim in this book is someone I knew. However, the story begins in Great Barrington, Massachusetts where a young woman is dealing with a horrible situation. Liza has put her mother in hospice and gone to mom's house to retrieve a cookbook her mother insists she must have right now. Problem is that mom is a hoarder and the house looks and smells like something on the television show about hoarders. When she tries to reach the book, it falls on the floor and hundred dollar bills flutter to the floor.
The family dynamic and the true story of those hundreds will initiate a murderous rampage across the country and lead Liza to Bisbee, Arizona and Sheriff Brady. I couldn't put the book down as I worried about Liza and also wondered who killed the character I cared about. The mystery isn't solved until the end and I was on tenterhooks that whole time. Unfortunately, Jance's books fit the category of books I can't wait to finish and yet dread coming to the final page.
This is a great story with wonderful characters and if sometimes Butch seems too good to be true, well that's okay with me.
Highly recommended
Source: HarperCollins
I'm not quite sure what made me think I would like this book except that so many bloggers I respect were raving about it. It's fantasy which I never read; perhaps I thought this was a good time to try the genre in order to widen my reading experience.
Actually, I can see why fans of fantasy would love the book. There is a real story here, a human story that readers can identify with to a certain extent. The writing is excellent, so evocative of the protagonist's experiences and fears, and as far as I can tell, true to a boy's thinking. Each character was created beautifully.
But in the long run, this story just isn't for me. I'm a fan of mystery novels and nonfiction so you can see how I'm not cut out for this story where a pond is an ocean, and parts of a farm are where fantasy creatures live, and you can pull growing kittens out of the ground like plants.
If you like fantasy, please do read this book. It's so well written that you will love it and broaden your reading life. Otherwise, no.
Source: William Morrow/HarperCollins
I've read books in the Rhapsody Gershwin series by this author, and I was glad to receive this novella featuring Tora Skammelsen, a writer. The Gershwin stories are witty with characters who have funny names. They are lighthearted, great fun to read.
North Sea Cottage is quite different. Tora Skammelsen has just left her husband and isn't in a good frame of mind. Her mother and sister hover annoyingly; they want her to do things their way but she wants some time to think. She writes historical fiction and has accepted the use of her aunt's small cottage near the sea since her aunt is in a nursing home due to a broken hip. The only caveat is that Tora must not for any reason go into the stable there.
She arrives just in time for a big storm. The power goes out and fortunately she finds plenty of candles, but then lightning strikes the stable and sets it on fire. After the firemen extinguish the fire the stable is completely open so Tora goes in to look around. What she finds in a cellar under a trap door is so shocking it sets her off on a mission to solve a mystery involving her family's past.
I was fascinated, and also fooled until almost the end. This is, to my mind, Jakobsen's finest writing yet. I'm looking forward to more about this heroine, hopefully soon.
Highly recommended
Source: Gift from a friend via Smashwords
Frances Fyfield writes unusual mystery novels of which this is a prime example. It begins with a woman sitting on the lap of a man who it becomes obvious is dead. She refuses to believe it at first but must convince herself he is really gone. She doesn't seem quite stable mentally and remembers how she first met him when she was put into his house to rob it. She knew the house and the man because her mother had cleaned house for him when the woman was a child. At long last she calls for an ambulance and police to come for his body.
A former cop named Jones remains in the house afterward as though he belongs there. We learn the story of Mad Di (Diana Quigly), Jones and a few other denizens of a little seaside town in England slowly, leaving plenty of time and room for misunderstanding. The dead man is Thomas Porteous, Di's husband, who was much older in chronological age but a child in spirit. The house had been a primary school for years but now is a huge gallery for Thomas' collection of art. Both Thomas and Di have an excellent eye for wonderful art. A friend who is otherwise a con man finds the art for them, but also they travel and search it out for themselves.
Meanwhile, Thomas' grown daughters and the husband of one conspire against him. They feel entitled to his wealth despite the fact that their mother had taught them to despise him. Mother apparently drowned when she fell from a ferry in the English Channel. Thomas and Di have several years of supreme happiness by simply ignoring the rest of the world. I loved them both and, as intended, hated his children.
However, (and you knew that "however" was coming, did't you?) I failed to get into the story of these people. It was difficult to believe Di could be so gullible with her life experiences and yet sometimes so wise. I never could figure out Jones and other characters, and the plot didn't really make a lot of sense to me. Sometimes a book doesn't hit me right for unknown reasons and I think that's the case with this one. I think for one thing Fyfield is sort of an acquired taste, one that I have yet to acquire.
Recommended only for Fyfield fans
Source: Partners in Crime Book Tours
Janice Law writes this series starring Francis Bacon, artist and bon vivant who is flamboyantly gay and gets himself in more trouble over pretty young men than you can shake a stick at. He's always either way behind in promised paintings to a gallery, or cadging drinks while he looks for jobs.
This time Bacon has fallen hopelessly in love/lust with a man named David who unfortunately for both of them has PTSD from his service in World War II. Bacon himself served by helping people to shelters in London during the blitz as some sort of warden. That experience tends to help him when he's caught in perilous situations in this story. He follows David to Tangier after a break-up caused by David's violent outbursts, and as usual he's made an error in doing so. After all, things were going well in London and London is where Bacon belongs, but . . .
In Tangier they get mixed up with a crowd that attends parties at a wealthy Englishman's home up in the hills. The man also happens to work for British intelligence and there is a German art dealer selling forgeries of Picasso paintings supposedly lost in the war. Bacon is, to make a long story short, forced by the police to replace the forger who has been killed. Just the kind of sticky wicket Bacon often finds himself in.
I laugh all the way through these novels because of the silliness of Bacon and the pickles he gets into but also because the other characters are so over the top. Another thing I like about the books is that Francis Bacon has such a good heart. He means well and always helps the people who deserve that help. Very clever stuff.
Highly recommended
Source: Netgalley
This is my second Deputy D.A. Rachel Knight mystery and I'm thinking perhaps I should have waited a bit before reading it. Going directly from the first one to this may explain why I didn't think this quite lived up to Guilt by Association. Still, it was a good read and I enjoyed the fact that some of my favorite characters from the first were in this one as well.
I do get impatient with Knight's love life, or rather her resistance to same. Her quirky attitude about commitment and her past doom every relationship so far. Oh well, that's her problem. The great part of her life is her close friends, and her "pal" Luis the gangbanger determined to get an education and better himself. She has been upgraded to a suite of rooms at The Biltmore; a dream life in the opinion of this housekeepingphobe to coin a word.
In this story a homeless man seems to be trying to grab the arm of a woman on the street when he collapses and everyone just sort of steps over him until finally someone notices the pool of blood. He has been stabbed and bled to death. This is tied to the horrific ax murder of a cop in his home workshop some time earlier that we have suffered through in the prologue. The murdered cop and the homeless victim are brothers.
Knight is shocked and offended that people ignored him just because he was homeless, so of course she takes up the cause not knowing she is dealing with a seriously dangerous person. Just finding out who the dead man is and connecting the dots takes up a good part of the book but Knight is like a bulldog. Meanwhile, having broken up with her latest boyfriend, she is angry and lonely and bitter and very difficult to get along with. Good thing she has those loyal friends and the tenacity to chase down this case.
I have two more novels in this series to read but they'll have to wait while I read others that I've promised to review. Maybe that's a good thing but I do look forward to them.
Recommended
Source: Netgalley
I've just had proof that you should be careful how you select books to read. For some reason when I saw coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial, I didn't like Marcia Clark, the prosecutor. I really can't say why unless it was because she was losing the case. But I've read a book by the defense attorney without qualms, so why wasn't I reading Clark's mystery novels that I had heard were very good? I finally took advantage of an offer I couldn't refuse to read her Rachel Knight series of which this is the first.
Guess what? I thoroughly enjoyed this first one and have gone directly into the second.
For one thing, I like Rachel Knight. She's a deputy district attorney who is a smart lawyer, not dumb enough to take ridiculous risks (most of the time), has great friends, and she lives in a hotel (sigh). She's trying to get over a relationship with another attorney but is attracted to someone in this story.
Her friends are smart and fun, a lawyer and an investigator, and the plot is interesting. It begins with the rape of a wealthy physician's daughter. Knight is under a lot of pressure to arrest the boy he suspects is responsible. At the same time she is investigating against orders the death of another deputy district attorney everyone liked. He died under very suspicious circumstances in a cheap motel.
I found this to be a page turner with great characters, an involving story, and plenty of red herrings to throw me off for a few minutes. And now I'm well into another case with Knight, happy in the knowledge that I have two more to go. This almost makes the current heat and humidity bearable.
Highly recommended
Source: Netgalley
