
An Intimate
Ghost
By Ellen Hart
St. Martin’s Press,
2004 www.minotaurbooks.com
320 pgs/$24.95/
ISBN: 0312317476
In this 12th
installment of the Jane Lawless mystery series, the opening prologue
begins with a gripping kidnapping that takes place on Halloween in
1972. The circumstances of that prologue don’t connect up for some
time, but the shadow of the kidnapping hangs over the events that
follow. In the present day, Jane Lawless is called to the location of a
wedding her staff is catering. The guests are behaving oddly, and it
quickly becomes clear that they’ve been poisoned with something
hallucinogenic. The police come, and the wedding guests are rushed to
the hospital, but not before Nick, the bridegroom, is badly injured
diving into an empty swimming pool. Jane is frantic. Not only is she
upset that people have been injured after eating her catered food, but
she also fears lawsuits. Who would do such a terrible thing? She can’t
believe her workers would have anything to do with it. Why has she been
targeted?
Alden
Clifford, the groom’s father, is a high school teacher, and he comes to
the forefront as it becomes apparent that the attack might be connected
to him and is not about Jane at all. Six months earlier he had tried to
prevent a school shooting, and the boy with the gun eventually shot and
killed himself. Allegations about Alden’s relationship with the boy
come out, and Jane begins to wonder if this has made Alden the intended
target. Nothing is immediately resolved, and Jane and The Lyme House
are under police investigation. Jane turns to her best friend,
Cordelia, but Cordelia has her own problems: namely a toddler dumped
upon her doorstep by her sister. The little niece and Cordelia offer
some great comic moments, and Cordelia, all by herself, is always
funny. She refuses to ride in Jane’s new Mini Cooper, calling it the
“Daisy Duck-mobile.” Instead she has bought herself a green Hummer, a
useful purchase which becomes clear later in the novel.
With
an intricately interwoven plot, Hart rolls out perfectly timed scenes
and details. The tension builds as the injury and death count
increases. The author has never been better and does a marvelous job
weaving in a compelling back story with the events of the present. She
draws the reader in to this complex structure and doesn’t let go until
the final denouement some three hundred pages later. It’s a gripping
and compelling story. By the time the reader reaches the end, an
intimate ghost has truly made its haunting presence known. Highly
recommended.
~Lori L. Lake, author of Stepping Out, Different Dress, Gun Shy, Under The Gun, and Ricochet In Time, and reviewer for Midwest Book Review, The
Independent Gay Writer, The Gay
Read, and Just About Write.
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The
Last Chance Texaco
By Brent Hartinger
HarperCollins, 2004
www.harpertempest.com
240
pgs/$15.99/ISBN: 0060509120
15-year-old Lucy Pitt
arrives at Kindle Group Home, the last stop on her eight year journey
through a foster care system where she has been bounced around since
her parents died in a car accident. She’s had problems everywhere she’s
gone and been basically labeled incorrigible. One more screw-up, and
she’ll be sent to a prison-like facility until she turns 18. Against
her better judgment, Lucy connects right away with Leon, one of the
counselors who she finds out later has had his own painful foster care
past. When he tells her early on that there is “hardly anything in
Kindle Home that isn’t broken somehow,” it resonates with the reader.
Lucy later says that the home is nothing more than “a storage shed for
broken teenagers,” and she isn’t too far off. Lucy and her fellow
residents have major problems, many of which have to do with having
been deprived of love early on.
Though
only in her mid-teens, Lucy is worn out and on the brink of giving up.
She is tired of fighting the other kids; tired of uncaring counselors;
most of all, she is tired of being uprooted continually. So she decides
to make an effort to stay at Kindle Home, but right away she finds
herself facing obstacles, not the least of which is her own temper. And
then things get even more complicated when she gets in a fight at
school, one of the fellow residents has it out for her, someone’s
setting fires in the neighborhood, and the funding for the home is
being threatened. Can Lucy pull things together and face up to all the
issues that are coming down upon her?
In
this second novel, following his critically acclaimed Geography Club, Hartinger has done
a marvelous job of bringing Lucy, the counselors, and the kids to life.
He’s written the story in first-person point of view, and Lucy’s voice
is clear and refreshing. You can hear and see her grow throughout the
events of the story. From Lucy’s first line, “The door was locked, and
I sure as hell didn’t have the key,” until the end of the story when
Lucy has managed to find and fully possess all the keys she needs to
succeed, I was charmed and moved. The
Last Chance Texaco is a terrific book geared toward the Young
Adult market, but also worthwhile for adults to read, if only to see
and understand the world that kids like Lucy Pitt are forced to survive
in. Highly recommended.
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