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FIFTH VICTIM (AUDIO)
by Zoë Sharp, read by Claire Corbett
Dreamscape, January 2012
Unabridged pages
$29.99
ISBN: 1611204895


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Charley Fox is a professional bodyguard. She and partner Sean came from England to the United States to work. While on a case in California, Sean was shot in the head and he has been in a coma ever since. Charley moved him to New York where she took a job partly to keep her mind off Sean.

The job was as a bodyguard to protect the naive young teenage daughter of a wealthy woman on Long Island. Kidnappers have been seizing children of wealthy parents and demanding a ransom for them. In one case when the parents hesitated, they lobbed off a finger and sent it to them. So Charley finds herself in the middle of a frightening and trying case.

At first it was a little difficult to get involved in the plot because I did not remember what happened in the previous book. But quite soon the situation became clear and I got deeply involved. It is difficult for an author to determine how much of the plot of the previous book in a series she should reveal; too much and those who have read the book will be bored. Not enough and the new reader will not understand what is happening. Ms Sharp strikes a happy medium.

There is great tension in the story. It is, after all, a thriller more than a murder mystery. There are murders, of course, but the tension comes from whether the girl will be kidnapped and if she is, how Charley will get her back. The mystery lies in who the kidnappers are and the answer to that surprises even Charley. So the action moves from New York to Long Island and back again with the tension building and then, like an onion being peeled, Ms Sharp gradually discloses the necessary facts that make the action clear.

The character of Charley is very well done. As a person she is very believable. She is tough and has all the abilities needed to perform her chosen job but inside there is weakness because of her partner and self-doubt and questioning. The other characters are somewhat stereotypical. We have the rich, naive girl who is selfish and believes she should always have her own way. There is the blustering wealthy father of one of the victims who offers, in the end, to pay off the kidnappers. There is the group of young people who hang around with each other and believe because they are wealthy they are entitled to everything. And there are the parents who are fearful and anxious and unwilling to deny their children anything.

The setting is an intriguing one. The homes and entertainments of the rich on Long Island remind me a little of Fitzgerald's Gatsby: rich, dedicated to pleasure, not entirely certain of what to do with themselves. The rich are different as Fitzgerald once said to Hemingway. I imagine champagne, yachts, and horseback riding along the shore as I listened to this book.

The reader is very good with the women's voices, not quite so good with the men's. She has an English accent, just enough to make Charley seem exactly what she is, a transplanted English woman working in New York. Listening to the book was quite intriguing with suspense built in and twists and turns that surprised me.

§ Sally Fellows is a retired history teacher with an MA in history and an avid reader of mysteries.

Reviewed by Sally A. Fellows, January 2012

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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