REVIEW

DEATH WAITS FOR YOU - Donna Anders

Savannah Blum moved to Jersey City from Kansas to pursue a writing career. She moves in with her Grandmother Johanna and it's Johanna that introduces her to friends, Sue and Paul Hawthorne who live in the same building as them. Sue and Paul contract Savannah to write the history of the Hawthorne family, a job which Savannah is very pleased to do, firstly because it pays well and because the Hawthorne's are such good friends of her grandmother.

Savannah soon finds that researching the family brings all sorts of things to the surface. When the family first came to America, one of their young sons was rejected by the authorities and sent back to Germany on his own; one of Paul's cousins, many years before, had been the final victim of a notorious “vampire like” serial killer; one of the current family members is a recluse, living in the old family manor; and Sue and Paul's grandson Simon seems to be everywhere that Savannah goes.

Weird family members in the Hawthorne family are only one thing that Savannah has to worry about,even before she took the job of writing the family history she's been stalked by somebody dressed in a black, vampire like cloak. Then the bodies of young women, killed in a manner echoing those long ago “vampire killings” are found.

DEATH WAITS FOR YOU is a mystery with a romantic overtone, with romance being used as a way of increasing the tension. Whilst the book does have a couple of suspenseful moments, overall the mystery plot doesn't really stand up to a lot of scrutiny. Savannah is being stalked and systematically terrified by the presence of this vampire like creature, but she's always reluctant to tell anyone what's happening. There's also an ongoing relationship that she maintains with a “boyfriend” that she's obviously not all that committed to, that she keeps going, despite quickly getting involved in a physical and more steamy relationship with another man. The second man also playing the part of a sinister unexplained presence in the overall mystery.

There's also something slightly odd in some of the characterisations – the reclusive character whom the whole family go out of their way to intimate is really weird, turns out to be not that odd at all, ultimately contributing nothing more than short term distraction in the overall plot. On the other hand, the daughter-in-law is whispering on telephones in the middle of the night and having visions of dire goings on, and nobody in the family is blinking an eye at her behaviour. Both of these elements seemed to be attempted ploys to lift the tension, or confuse the possible range of suspects, but really by this stage it was pretty obvious who the killer was and it wasn't much further on and the whole motive wasn't that hard to work out either. For some reason, even though she was beaten fairly firmly over the head with them, Savannah misses these clues completely.

Unfortunately, the book then ends with a classic fem-jep situation in which the real male romantic lead has an opportunity to reveal himself in a blaze of glory, going with his gut instinct and saving the girl, who'd just managed to be stupid enough to hand herself on a plate to the killer, even though she's been frightened for her life up until that point and the police; her family and everybody else has been warning her not to do anything risky, it was obvious that the vampire killer was after her.

Combine the inexplicable behaviour of Savannah, with some pretty obvious attempts at confusing the issue with a “which man is the evil man” storyline, and some clunky and unnatural dialogue and this book wasn't for me. 

BOOK DETAILS
BOOK INFORMATION
Author
ISBN
9781416514862
Year of Publication
BLURB

When aspiring novelist Savannah Blum is asked to write the history of the Hawthornes, a prominent New York family, it's a dream come true. But as her research exposes secrets that go back generations, a mysterious figure shadows her every move -- following, watching, waiting to strike. 

Along the Hudson River, women are being savagely mutilated. Is it the work of a serial killer who vanished more than thirty years ago? Or is it a copycat with an even more insatiable blood thirst? Sexy Simon Hawthorne is keeping a protective eye on Savannah as evil closes in, but only she can discover the link between past and present. . . . Only she can catch the killer. . . . Only she can save her own life . . .

Review DEATH WAITS FOR YOU - Donna Anders
Karen Chisholm
Tuesday, October 9, 2007

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