“Split Image”  By Robert B. Parker

     A Jesse Stone Novel

2011 Book Review #117

Book List Review

Petrov Ognowski is dead. A bullet bounced around inside his skull for about six hours before Suit Simpson, a patrol officer in the small Massachusetts town of Paradise, found the body. Petrov worked for Reggie Galen, one of two crime bosses who call Paradise home. The other, Knocko Moynihan, lives across the street from Galen.

Suit's boss, chief of police, Jesse Stone, finally has occasion to find out why two onetime rivals choose to be neighbors. (Seems they married identical twin sisters, Rebecca and Roberta, known as the Bang Bang Twins in high school.) Reggie and Knocko are shocked about Petrov's fate but, give Jesse no help with the case.

In the meantime, Jesse, still hurting from the latest breakup with his ex-wife, is helping old friend, private detective, Sunny Randall, star of her own series, track down a teenager who has moved in with a New Age commune.

The three non-converging plotlines are linked tenuously by one theme: the two mobsters with their Bang Bang twins; the teenager, denied affection from her rigidly aristocratic parents, with her commune cohorts; and Jesse and Sunny with each other.

And the crimes? The commune is more creepy than comfy, and the Bang Bang Twins may have set in motion a series of events that will lead to violence.

Parker's ninth Jesse Stone novel finds the series in slight decline. The plotlines are thin hence the need for three, but, the dialogue is sharp, and the Jesse-Sunny romance has possibilities.

My Thoughts:  I heard this book on audiotape and became irritated at all the, “he said, she said” dialog. The plot was okay, but, the characters were not very interesting! 

“Days of Gold”   By Jude Deveraux

 

2011 Book Review #116

Publishers Weekly Review

The inevitable prequel to “Lavender Morning” places Deveraux on familiar historical romance ground as she traces the journey to America of the namesake of the fictional town of Edilean, Va. English-born Edilean Talbot is very out of place when she arrives in 1766 Scotland to live with her uncle.

A pressing problem presents itself when her uncle plans to marry off the rich, beautiful and well-educated Edilean to one of his unsavory friends the moment she turns 18. Reluctantly, Angus McTern, the highland hunk who laughs at Edilean even as he falls for her, helps her escape and accompanies her on a transatlantic voyage acting the role of her husband.

Once in Boston, they go their separate ways, later reuniting when old friends help Edilean dispense with an enemy.

After dozens of novels, Deveraux has a sure hand evoking plucky heroines, dastardly villains and irresistible heroes, as well as a well-rounded supporting cast. If the plot seems familiar and occasionally contrived (how convenient laudanum is available when someone needs to be knocked out), the pace moves quickly and the romance sparks with enough voltage to keep readers turning pages. 

My Thoughts:  The story was interesting and the characters lively.  The end was predictable and a happy one!  But, I found the book too long.

“FIRE SALE”  By Sara Paretsky

                   A V.I. Warshawski Novel

 

2011 Book Review #115

Publisher’s Journal Review

Private eye V.I. Warshawski takes a break from tony Lakeview to fill in for her old high school basketball coach on Chicago's South Side in her 12th adventure. Vic starts her volunteer stint looking for a team sponsor at mega-discount store By-Smart, whose founder, Buffalo Bill Bysen, is a fellow alum.

Of all Bysen's cutthroat, cost-cutting family, only idealist 19-year-old Billy shows any interest in helping the team. When he disappears, his frustrated father hires Vic to find him. The mother of a high school basketball player also hires Vic to investigate sabotage at the flag factory where she works-an investigation cut short when the factory blows up before Vic's eyes.

Things go no better at school or at home, and clues pile on but they don't add up. Vic takes her lumps as she makes her way from a fundamentalist church, where the pastor goes to extremes for his flock, to the city dump, where villains try to bury their secrets.

Paretsky has recently tackled the Holocaust (Total Recall) and globalization (Hard Time); here she explores the struggles of the working poor and the schemes of the rich and infamous. Packed with social themes and moral energy, held together by humor, compassion and sheer feistiness, this novel shows why Paretsky and her heroine are such enduring figures in American detective fiction. 

My Thoughts:  V.I. Warshawski always gives us a good story!  Wish they would make a TV series starring her!  This is Paretsky’s 12^th Warshawski novel.  Each one just as good as the last!

“The Summerhouse” 

               By Jude Deveraux                                                                                                           

2011 Book Review # 114

Book List Review

Serendipity brings three career women together at the DMV in New York City on their twenty-first birthdays. Ellie, cute and perky, is a hopeful artist. Leslie is an aspiring dancer, and Madison is in New York to pursue a modeling career.

Nineteen years later, Ellie, a successful popular fiction writer who hasn't written for three years, asks the other two to meet at a summerhouse in Maine to find out if their lives went as wrong as hers.

Beautiful Madison tells the group about giving up modeling to nurse an ungrateful husband and Leslie talks about leaving the dance world to marry the boy back home, who now may be cheating on her. But neither is as bitter about men as Ellie, whose ex-husband has taken all her money and her self-confidence.

The catharsis achieved by their confessions is helpful, but what really changes their lives is the mysterious Madame Zoya, who promises to let them relive any three weeks of their lives and to choose a new path or remain with the old.

Deveraux is at the top of her game here as she uses the time-travel motif that was so popular in A Knight in Shining Armor (1996), successfully updating it with a female buddy twist that will make fans smile.

My Thoughts:  A different kind of book for me, but I liked it.  No blood or gore, but plenty of human feelings and a little magic.  It’s interesting to see what choices are made in these women’s lives when they are given a "second chance". 

“No Place Like Home”  

    By Mary Higgins Clark

 

2011 Book Review #113

  Publishers Weekly Review

At One Old Mill Lane, in Mendham, N.J., 10-year-old Liza Barton wakes to find her stepfather, Ted Cartwright, attacking her mother, Audrey.   Liza grabs a gun in defense, but in the ensuing melee Audrey is killed and Ted is wounded.   

Dubbed "Little Lizzie Borden," Liza is taken away and almost convicted of murdering her mother and attempting to kill the lying, scheming Ted.  Twenty-four years later,  Liza, now known as Celia Foster Nolan, has just been presented with a surprise birthday present from her new husband, Alex: the house at One Old Mill Lane.

Alex doesn't know Celia is really Liza, and he doesn't know the house's grim past-but thanks to a real estate code obligating agents to notify prospective buyers if a house could be considered "stigmatized property,"  he's about to find out about the latter at least.

As Celia fights to keep her dark secret hidden, their real estate agent turns up dead. More folks are killed and Celia comes under suspicion. But in typical Clark style, most of the characters look a little guilty.

My Thoughts:  There are a lot of surprises in this offering.  I am a fan of Clark’s work and liked this book very much.  I finished it at 4:00 this morning!  Couldn't put it down!

“Prior Bad Acts”   By Tami Hoag

 

2011 Book Review #112

Book List Review

Law-enforcement officials throughout Hennepin County thought they'd have an advocate on the bench when one of their own--former state prosecutor Carey Moore--became a criminal-court judge. Her Honor, however, knows that she will be scrutinized for favoring the prosecution, so she makes sure to rule evenly.

But even is not the way the D.A.'s office would describe her handling of the case against defendant, Karl Dahl. The cops and prosecutors are sure that Dahl is the one who brutally raped and murdered a mother and her two children, but they recognize that the evidence is highly circumstantial. Admitting Dahl's prior bad acts into evidence, they argue, would establish a pattern of behavior, whereas Dahl's attorney maintains that the evidence would be prejudicial.

When Carey sides with the defense, her decision ignites a series of events that begins with her being brutally attacked. Then Dahl escapes, and homicide detectives Sam Kovak and Nikki Liska give chase. A first-rate thriller with an ending that will knock your socks off.

My Thoughts:   Scary Book.  Interesting plot.  Surprise ending…unless you are really paying attention!

“A Time To Kill”  By John Grisham

 

2011 Book Review #111

 Library Journal Review

In this lively novel, Grisham explores the uneasy relationship of blacks and whites in the rural South. His treatment is balanced and humane, if not particularly profound, slighting neither blacks nor whites.

Life becomes complicated in the backwoods town of Clanton, Mississippi, when a black worker is brought to trial for the murder of the two whites who raped and tortured his young daughter. Everyone gets involved, from Klan to NAACP.

Grisham's pleasure in relating the Byzantine complexities of Clanton politics is contagious, and he tells a good story. There are touches of humor in the dialogue; the characters are salty and down-to-earth. An enjoyable book, which displays a respect for Mississippi ways and for the contrary people who live there. 

My Thoughts:  It is a well written and honest book.  I found it depressing which, I suppose, is the goal of a book written about depressing times!  It was made into a movie which I didn’t see and I think I’m glad!