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HUMMINGBIRD WIZARD, THE
by Meredith Blevins
Forge, September 2003
400 pages
$24.95
ISBN: 0765307693


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

You do wonder about the blurbs from famous authors on the front of books, whether the big names have even bothered to read the book in question. Some of the great and good of crime fiction, including Jonathan Kellerman, Tony Hillerman and Loren D. Estelman certainly wax lyrical about Meredith Blevins' debut novel.

They all mention the new ground she's covering, leaving me wondering if we read the same novel. Aside from the fact the book's leading characters are mainly Gypsies and the story has a mystical element to it, there's certainly nothing terribly new here under the sun.

Don't get me wrong . . . it's not a bad book by any means. But it's sort of, well, unremarkable. There's a lot of ambling round highways and byways in the 400 pages, leading me to think that a strong editor could have done wonders with the off-beat material. There's some nicely deadpan dialogue, and one or two of the characters have mileage in them, particularly the eccentric and feisty matriarch Mina. But Annie Szabo, the main character, is, well, unremarkable.

Annie, a journalist, has had nothing to do with her Gypsy in-laws since her husband Stevan died. But when her close friend Jerry is murdered, Mina and Co stampede back into Annie's life and involve her in the hunt for the murderer. Except there isn't much of a hunt and there's certainly no tension. The problem with killing off a character you don't meet is that you have no feeling for the person. And by the same token Blevins needed to do a little more work in setting Annie up as a compelling and well-rounded character.

This is the kind of book I laboured through without ever being hooked, and found myself shrugging at the end, particularly as Blevins doesn't quite pull the mystical angle off convincingly. Oh, and the novel contains one of the most pretentious and overwritten sex scene I've ever read, which had me reaching for a convenient sick bag!

Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, October 2003

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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