A promising, poignant whodunit.
A debut murder mystery focuses on complicated relationships.
The novel’s opening scene lays out the crisis Betty-Jean Garrett must endure when the narrative builds to its denouement. She awakens with a premonition that something bad has happened, and a phone call from her father saying there’s a family emergency confirms it. The story revolves around Betty-Jean and her older sister, Margaret. The two are best friends, with Betty-Jean being the impulsive one and Margaret, the levelheaded, responsible sister. The narrative meanders slowly back through the recent past, detailing the lives of the sisters, their friends, and especially their lovers—Tim Harrison, Betty-Jean’s handsome fitness-trainer husband, and Sherry Larson, Margaret’s secret lesbian girlfriend, a highly successful but deeply troubled ad executive. Sherry, who grew up in an orphanage, has a violent backstory. Repeatedly raped by the orphanage’s janitor, she bonded with Priscilla, a fellow orphan. Misinterpreting their friendship, Sherry propositioned her only to have an angry Priscilla embarrass her “in front of some of the girls…. ‘I thought you was a queer. You stay away from me, you freak.’ ” Margaret meets Sherry in a gay bar while on a business trip. A mystery man has been sending Sherry bouquets of roses. Then a crank caller becomes more threatening and begins murdering people Sherry knows, including her therapist. In this engaging mystery, Plummer offers several likely suspects, such as Gilbert Daggett, Sherry’s homophobic account executive who tells lesbian jokes when she is within earshot. Readers are kept guessing right up to the surprise conclusion. Although the dialogue has its snappy moments, as when Betty-Jean explains why she is shopping—“I needed some retail therapy”—it suffers from an overusage of “he said”/“she said” when it is obvious who is speaking. But the author deftly articulates many gay people’s fear of being out when Margaret tells Sherry: “We’re still being ridiculed, and even getting killed for being gay....some kids are still being bullied to the point of suicide.”
A promising, poignant whodunit.Pub Date: May 17, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4809-2044-6
Page Count: 758
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Co.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of...
Hoover’s (November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.
At first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers; Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. When Ryle is not in the throes of a jealous rage, his redeeming qualities return, and Lily can justify his behavior: “I think we needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together,” she tells herself. Lily marries Ryle hoping the good will outweigh the bad, and the mother-daughter dynamics evolve beautifully as Lily reflects on her childhood with fresh eyes. Diary entries fancifully addressed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres serve as flashbacks to Lily’s teenage years, when she met her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she found squatting in a neighbor’s house. When Atlas turns up in Boston, now a successful chef, he begs Lily to leave Ryle. Despite the better option right in front of her, an unexpected complication forces Lily to cut ties with Atlas, confront Ryle, and try to end the cycle of abuse before it’s too late. The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read.
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1036-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Roberts does it again with this fast-paced romantic mystery that's both steamy and thrilling, despite its somewhat obvious...
Beautiful Italian babe with a passion for fire and doomed hunks joins the arson squad and discovers that someone has held a torch for her since she was a child.
When Reena Hale is 11 years old, she watches her family's Baltimore pizzeria go up in flames. Thanks to a local arson detective, John Minger, and the girl's keen memory, police determine that a neighborhood crook whose young son had recently attacked Reena was out for revenge, and soon cops publicly haul the dirt bag off to jail. The large and loving Hale family bands together and rebuilds; Reena grows up curious about the origins of fire. She attends college and, after her boyfriend dies in an accident, joins the police force and learns the inner workings of the fire department. Eventually, she teams with Minger to solve the city's suspicious fires. Meanwhile, over the years, a shady character has been hiding in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to violently sabotage Reena's relationships (usually with the help of explosives). Somehow Reena doesn't put together that all of her boyfriends have been in the path of catastrophic (occasionally deadly) events, so her stalker hits the phone lines to clue her in with dirty messages that become more and more intimate. When Reena launches a torrid love affair with her new neighbor, whose truck soon explodes, she begins to get it. Fearing for her family's safety, Reena reopens past cases and learns that her troubles started when she was a child. The tale builds to a breathless climax as she (literally) races to beat out the flames of one fire before determining where the next one will be set.
Roberts does it again with this fast-paced romantic mystery that's both steamy and thrilling, despite its somewhat obvious nature.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2005
ISBN: 0-399-15306-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2005
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
