 Lori L. Lakereviews
An
Intimate Ghost by Ellen Hart
& The Last Chance Texaco by Brent Hartinger |
 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. |
 The
Last Chance TexacoBy 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. |