Kira Connal is a WPC working for the Bristol Police force. She's used to coming up against members of the local crime fraternity - from petty thieves, local dealers to small-time thugs. But when local businessman Oliver Stroud is reported missing, Kira gets the sense that his disappearance is a little different. His wife Hannah and daughter Lucy seem convinced that Oliver is a decent man, incapable of real deceit and even less so of desertion. Yet when Kira starts to investigate, she can find no trace of Oliver's life before 1993. It's as though before that, he never existed.
Tia and Mike Baye are worried about their sixteen-year-old son Adam, who has grown more and more distant after the suicide of his best friend - they can't help but worry. When Adam disappears and they find a message, "Just stay quiet and all safe" from an unknown correspondent, addressed to their son, you have to ask, just how far will you go to protect your children?
Book Review:
This book has a lot of threads that seem loosely related, but get drawn tighter and tighter together as long held secrets unravel. There's the parents who wrestle over invading their son's privacy in desperation as he draws away from everything. There's the neighbour with a terrible secret who's child desperately needs a kidney transplant. The mother, still grieving over her son's suicide who finds a photo that shows her son may not have been alone that awful night after all.
Harlan Coben deftly weaves these interconnected events together in a theme he has explored in several of his recent novels, the extent people will go to to protect their own loved ones, everybody else is a distant second.
Two young women, born hundreds of years apart, share a bond.
Book Review:
For such a massive tome, the time passes quickly on the read of LABYRINTH. Almost chatty in places for an historical drama, it manages to spin out its tale of holy secrets through the ages in a very comfortable, easy style that invites the kind of coffee and chat it generated during its creation (a six year process). The work in progress of author Kate Mosse on LABYRINTH was live on-line during the novel's creation and spurned a massive amount of interest from the snippets of plot details and historical data that were released en route. Similar has been done with SEPULCHRE, the second standalone work from this author.
The past mirroring the present premise never quite washed with this novel - the modern day scenes read something like a movie-of-the-week thriller and did little to enhance the read. The elusiveness of a plot driver in LABYRINTH was pure frustration - such a long wait for resolution, and when it supposedly came, could it be truly regarded as such? This is a book, perhaps mostly for the ladies, very much written in the melodramatic vein of "the young lady in jeopardy with only her fragile wits and sensibilities", who, of course, somehow manages to find her way through to the truth - delicious, if you are in the mood for such a thing. Those seeking some sort of immensely satisfying historical experience with gratifyingly plausible answers for the past deeds of those pursuing some kind of religious enlightenment - pass on this one.
LABYRINTH is though still an immensely entertaining read as you are caught up in the perils of Alais, her wisdom and bravery, her skills in medieval apothecary, tackling tasks that we assume were mostly foreign to women of her station, British author Kate Mosse shows great affection for her home of Carcassonne and brings the past of the town to bloody glory with her impassioned descriptive narrative. It is quite the love affair of a place, not so much of the story, that dominates this book.
Don't let the synopsis mislead you - this is not really a book about a group of children, nor is it necessarily a book about a murder investigation. This is a book about Joseph Calvin Vaughan and how events shape him. From the death of his father when Joseph is only 11; through the beginning of the unknown killers vicious killing spree; the long-term hospitalisation / sanctioning of his mother; his love life; his loss - the reader travels with Joseph as he attempt to make sense of the world around him.
It seems to move incredibly slowly as Joseph's life ebbs and flows - well mostly ebbs really. The brutal killings of young girls continue slowly, paced out over years as Joseph's own life peaks and then hits major low points. And all the way through his life, there is an ongoing doubt - even that he has - about who is the killer of young girls. There are other bit characters in A QUIET BELIEF IN ANGELS - Joseph's mother; friends from the small town; lovers; the local sheriff, but the focus of the story; the narrator of events is Joseph.
You'll need to slow down to read A QUIET BELIEF IN ANGELS. You'll need to connect with Joseph. You'll need to be content to take a journey through many years with a boy, who grows to a young man, experiences a hard and painful life, and in the end, finds out the truth - but you have to wonder if it's just a little too late. It's a very moving book, involving despite the slowness of events, despite the almost back seat that the murders take. At the end of it all, you have to wonder if an author could put his central character through any more and bring him out at the other end alive.
