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Now here’s a narrative that really begins with a bang. And yes, I do know it is a pretty poor joke. A man is tied up in the boot of a vehicle when he realises a train is approaching. The reader feels sorry for the victim until the disclosure that he is the rotten, cheating husband of Ali Reynolds, the protagonist of the tale. While the reader may not actually cheer at the disclosure, any sympathy is somewhat eroded. Ali has set up a blog site at cutlooseblog.com (which is, in fact, a blog site owned by J A Jance – I couldn’t resist looking) and there she communicates with the wider public. She screens comments to the site (of course) but feels most people sympathise with her about her intention to take her previous employer to court because said employer decided she was too old. Since Ali’s husband Paul was killed when she was near the scene of the fatal accident, she understandably becomes a suspect. Perhaps murder is seen as an easier option than divorce. Paul was to be divorced and married the weekend after his death, just in time to legitimise his fiancée April’s offspring. Unfortunately for Ali, she is still the major beneficiary of the will so Paul being killed when he was gives her an even better motive for murder. Edie, Ali’s mother, hastens to her daughter’s side but complications ensue when Ali meets April and immediately feels empathy for her – after all, her husband, too, had died before the birth of their baby and Ali had had to fight to bring up their son alone. While the reader must always be prepared for a certain amount of suspension of disbelief, I didn’t find the stretch, in this book, to be too elastic, other than in some minor instances. Blogs, of course, are proliferating in these times, with everyone (and their pet) seeming to have one. Whether an intelligent woman like Ali is likely to have a tell-all site is perhaps open to debate – but then I rarely peruse blogs. The characters come across, for the most part, as being realistic. Ali certainly is (except for her blog) as is Edie. April – well, perhaps. Certainly, April’s mum is the sterotypical mother-in-law. As to the baddies, once the motives (for more than one murder) are unwound, they, too, seem convincing. Of course, there is a potential love interest for Ali so perhaps that is pleasure in store for constant readers – if Ali doesn’t break his heart first. This was my first experience of a Jance novel and I must say I found it quite satisfactory.
Reviewed by Denise Pickles, January 2008
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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