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Charlie McNally is handed a great scoop: Dorinda Sweeney could not have killed her husband three years ago because she was at work. There are videotapes to prove it. Of course, the people with the tape have their own agenda. Yes, they want to get Dorie out of jail. And they also want to put a very large spoke in the election wheels of Oscar "the Great and Powerful Oz," currently attorney general with eyes on a governorship. He is campaigning on a law-and-order platform; having Dorie's conviction overturned during his campaign won't help him at all. The big problem for Charlie? Dorie confessed. While Charlie is trying to get Dorie to agree to an interview, which Dorie persists in refusing to do, Charlie looks this gift horse in the mouth. She tries to track down witnesses, tries to make sure the police did their job correctly, tries to figure out who killed Ray Sweeney. The police aren't as cooperative as Charlie would like, for obvious reasons. And she keeps tripping over the fact that Dorie confessed. Charlie's mother is having pre-marital "work" done at a local clinic; Charlie spends a lot of time visiting her mother. This contributes to the stress in Charlie's life in a number of ways. Lorraine thinks Charlie should see her plastic surgeon: it's never to early to start thinking about this kind of thing. Lorraine can always make Charlie feel a trifle clumsy, a little off, not quite as successful as Charlie intellectually knows she is. Plus there seems to be something not quite right going on at the clinic and Charlie is worried that her mother isn't being taken care of quite the way she should be. Just in case Charlie doesn't have enough going on in her life, her relationship with Josh Gelston is progressing in ways that make Charlie blissfully happy and gut-wrenchingly nervous at the same time. Josh is the happy part. His eight-year-old daughter Penny is the nervous part. Penny is not happy that Josh is seeing Charlie. One can imagine what a child that age can come up with given the circumstances. Charlie knows she is in for it. And she is. In FACE TIME, Charlie seems a lot more secure than she did in PRIME TIME, the first in the series. While station politics give her problems, she doesn't stress out nearly as much as one might expect after the first book. This is a pleasant change; book two is a definite improvement over book one in terms of character growth and likeability. The plot isn't incredibly challenging for readers familiar with the genre, and Ryan does a good job with the false leads and red herrings. AIR TIME is due out in September 2009. There are lots of places Ryan can take Charlie - it should be interesting to see which path she chooses.
Reviewed by P.J. Coldren, August 2009
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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