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DESTROYING ANGELS
by Gail Lukasik
Five Star Publishing, March 2006
295 pages
$25.95
ISBN: 1594143609


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Leigh Girard's brush with breast cancer has caused her to re-evaluate her life. After some soul-searching, she realizes that she's no longer willing to settle for either her cobbled together schedule of teaching jobs or her perfunctory marriage. She's vacationed in Door County, Wisconsin, and decides that it provides just the environment she needs to help her heal. In short order she lands a job as a journalist for the Door County Gazette and undertakes her first assignment: writing the obituary of a man named Carl Peck.

When she interviews Carl's widow, Eva, she learns that Eva doesn't believe the coroner's conclusion that Carl died of an accidental poisoning. She tells Leigh that Carl was an expert mushroomer who would never mistake a poisonous mushroom for an edible one. Before Leigh can interview Eva at greater length, however, Eva's daughter, Sarah, steps in to shield her mother.

Leigh can't stop herself from digging deeper into the circumstances of Carl's death, even though the locals and her editor all discourage her from pursuing the matter any further. Before long, a local librarian named Joyce Oleander commits suicide and this time it's clear that her body was moved after her death. Leigh wonders whether her death was really suicide at all.

The tension ratchets up when, one night on a lonely stretch of highway, a truck rams Leigh's rear bumper and then forces her off the road.

Despite of the attempt on her life, Leigh is undeterred. As she sifts through the past of the little artists' enclave, she discovers more than a few secrets that the locals would just as soon stay hidden.

Lukasik has created an interesting protagonist. Leigh is a breast cancer survivor, but she's certainly no victim. She's a prickly, angry woman with enough self-awareness to acknowledge her own shortcomings. She trips over those shortcomings often enough to risk losing the reader's sympathy, but managed to convince me, at least, to keep on rooting for Leigh. I appreciated reading, for once, about a woman who isn't 30 and perky and who struggles with real mid-life problems.

The other characters in the book are a pretty volatile lot, which makes them all ideal suspects, but they don't form a very attractive ensemble for Lukasik to carry forward into future installments of the series. It's hard to imagine why Leigh would want to remain in Door County, hanging out with these strange people, no matter how much she loves the scenery, when she could easily return to Chicago, where presumably she has nicer friends.

One of the real pleasures of the book is Lukasik's ability to evoke a sense of place. Her descriptions of the lakes, hiking trails and caves of Door County on the brink of winter are some of the best writing in the book. It's clear that Lukasik has a real affection for the place.

This is Lukasik's first novel, and while this book was a good enough read, I'm hoping that her next book will be even better.

Reviewed by Carroll Johnson, September 2006

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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