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List Price: $29.95 Our Price: $19.77 You Save: $10.18 Features • Abridged • Audiobook |
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| ♥♥♥♥♥ | de amicitia |
| What a relief! In her last Alex Cooper novel, Fairstein looked all set to go down the always-doomed garden path of romance with long-time sparing partners Alex and Mike. I was very relieved to see that she has chosen another route. Not only does romance between such figures almost always lead to jumped sharks, but the whole idea of friendship as a deep and valued relationship is betrayed every time such a couple ends up in bed for lack of something better to do. Congratz to Ms Fairstein for choosing the more complex and interesting road too-seldom taken.
Similarly, the action here is extremely well-crafted, relying on both background and brute force to build suspense for the reader. Fairstein's NYC history lessons continue, and her style of delivery gets more and more seamless. There are no long pages of narrative background here, nor do we have to sit through virtual soliloquies from Mike. The details are crisp and vivid, but Fairstein works them into normal narrative gaps and regular human dialogue. There's a slightly bloated detour into Psych 101 and the laws for civil commitments in the State of New Jersey, but that comes at the point in any mystery where the reader has to sit through some slogging of one sort or another, so fair enough. Quibble: The last action sequence is, perhaps, marred by the author's need to make us see a new setting. That might have been more expeditiously handled, since we certainly could have been given that tour earlier, but if you really get impatient, you won't mind hitting "fast forward" with your page-turning. Other than those two spots, however, the tight time-line keeps things moving brilliantly. Here we get a more realistic set-up for the "Alex-at-risk" element of the plot that Fairstein so loves, and we get a more pro-active Alex than in some of the other books in the series. That's good. If Alex must keep setting herself up as a target, it's time that she starts saving herself, too. There's much less personal give-and-take than in earlier novels, and the book is better for the balance. Luc - introduced in the last episode - is back and even more charming, but he isn't pulled into the main plot. We get only a long phone conversation with one of the women friends who make the series so wonderful, but there's no other logical place to include such an exchange. No trips to the Vineyard, either, and very little fine dining here, but - again - that absence moves the plot along suspensefully. Faithful readers will love this and newcomers have picked a good place to start. |
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