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THE VANISHED PRIESTESS
by Meredith Blevins
Forge, October 2004
320 pages
$23.95
ISBN: 0765307804


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Annie Szabo finds her home environs invaded first by her gypsy mother-in-law with whom she has an abrasive relationship and secondly by her daughter seeking refuge from an abusive husband.

Annie is a freelance journalist and she is researching an article on the circus with the information supplied by her neighbour and friend, Margo Spanger. Margo has an exciting circus project which funds a women's shelter. While Annie is trying to deal with the difficulties in her family Margo is murdered and Annie feels compelled to find out who killed her and why.

The various activities and relationships of Annie make her life very complicated and confused but she has a clear picture of her aims. She concentrates initially on rescuing her daughter from the husband who is a monstrous picture of a violent abuser -- he completely destroys the door of Annie's home when he pursues his wife and son there and physically attacks his wife again.

Her mother-in-law, fortune teller Madame Mina, gives mystic assistance to Annie but also drives her up the wall! The household expands to include other potential helpers and irritants as Annie turns to searching for the truth about MargoŚs death. In Annie's back yard there are two surreal pets -- two giraffes -- which add to the circus atmosphere. Annie herself practises trapeze work which she finds both liberating and frightening as she has a fear of heights.

So many characters appear, all larger then life, that they become hard to appreciate especially as some of them are rather sketchily described. We see everything through Annie's eyes and how she interprets them under the influence of her particular hang-ups. The ultimate solution is one which stretches credulity in some ways though it is in keeping with the whole offbeat atmosphere of the book. This is the second book of a projected series -- the first was THE HUMMINGBIRD WIZARD.

I am not sure that I would wish to pursue Annie's adventures any further but it might be that I'm suffering from a surfeit of weirdness and I might want to return to it at a later date when I recover my appetite for the world of circuses, gypsies, mystic events and overblown characters. This is an unusual book with a high octane mixture of cultures, detection and humour.

Reviewed by Jennifer S. Palmer, May 2005

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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