Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 16, 1994 TAG: 9401090140
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
By Irene Allen. Villard Books. $18.
Irene Allen, a Harvard- and Princeton-educated geologist, introduced the Quaker detective Elizabeth Eliot in her first novel, "Quaker Silence." She continues her story in "Quaker Witness."
Eliot is the Clerk of a Quaker Meetinghouse in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Up the street is Harvard University. Janet Stevens, a graduate student, has just taken the agonizing and career-threatening step of filing charges of sexual harassment against her adviser, an eminent paleontologist.
Seeking relief from intense emotional turmoil, she goes to the Meetinghouse where Eliot finds and befriends her. That evening, Janet is horrified to learn that her adviser has been found murdered in his lab. Because of her complaint, suspicion has fallen automatically on her. Eliot elects to become involved in the messy details of Janet's life and thus to be, in the Quaker sense, "a witness."
Allen has the necessary skills for the telling of a good story and she uses them well. She creates the appropriate air of suspense and then moves smoothly toward resolution. For readers unfamiliar with Quaker faith and practice, her explanations are subtle and unobtrusive. The quality of her writing is uneven, and characterization sometimes does not rise above stereotype. But the unhurried pace of her clear and uncluttered prose bespeaks the power of the quiet mind in a centered life as we see it lived out in the Quaker detective. The voices of violence in much of today's art rise yet louder and louder. Allen chooses to speak in a contrary voice. It is a refreshing difference.
- MARIE S. BEAN
Someone Is Killing the Great Chefs of America.
By Nan and Ivan Lyons. Little, Brown. $19.95.
Mixing romance, haute cuisine and excitement in perfect proportions, Nan and Ivan Lyons know the secret of concocting the recipes their fans love to drool over. However, only dedicated readers of Gourmet magazine or professional connoisseurs have the savvy to appreciate all the subtleties of food, drink and wit featured in this sequel to ". . . the Great Chefs of Europe." The rest of us can learn as we laugh.
In the previous work, Achille Van Golk was the villain, but he died. Or did he? Now in his stead we have Alec Gordon, slim, sophisticated and equally maniacal. Leaving the Swiss clinic where he has been undergoing psychological treatment for several years, he comes to America and is hired by Natasha O'Brien to work for the new magazine she hopes will dazzle the cognoscente of cooking. Soon afterwards, two chefs are killed in gory but gleeful ways. Who done it?
Natasha, a pastry chef of no mean mettle and the object of all the romancing, thinks she knows, but dashes off to Paris for the 10th International Culinary Olympics - with Alec. The p theatrical effects in that city where only food is taken seriously. We wonder who the murderer is and keep turning the pages for the answer as well as for more tantalizing descriptions of the wonderful, wicked ways of the super-stars of gastronomy and their creations. Shifting from the White House to the Grand Palais, to cocktail parties and restaurants, the Lyons keep the tone of their novel as light as a souffle. And they keep readers intrigued with their humor, always letting food dominate the crazy, fast-paced and irreverent romp.
- LYNN ECKMAN
Life Blood: A Novel of Suspense.
By Caroline Llewellyn. Scribners. $20.
The dust jacket quotes the New York Times in its claim that Caroline Llewellyn's new novel is "In the style of Daphne de Maurier and Mary Stewart." Set in the small Cotswold village of Sheepcote and told from the viewpoint of its first-person narrator, "Life Blood" does compare favorably with both de Maurier and Stewart. Llewellyn's descriptions also invite favorable comparison: "To the north ... lay the long barrow. It looked now like a great ship sailing into the darkness of the woods, its stern lit by the setting sun, the green trees on the summit like sails bellying in the breeze that rises with the dusk. A full moon, translucent as a disk of honesty, hung above it in a pale blue sky."
Llewellyn's characters include a wide range and are uniformly well-crafted. Finally, the mysteries revealed are finely mysterious with solutions that ring true.
The central character, Jo Treleven, arrives in England from Canada with her young son to stay in the Sheepcote cottage that had once belonged to her grandmother, Nan. Jo, at first interested in selling her inheritance, becomes ever more involved in old, never-solved mysteries which seem more and more to center on her grandmother and other previously unknown relatives as well. When Jo learns that Nan had written a novel titled "Life Blood," she begins a thwarted search for a copy in her belief that therein lie the answers to many of her questions.
Llewellyn certainly knows her locales well. She also handles beautifully depictions of such hard-to-describe individuals as young children and old people. The novel provides enough suspense in the British style to entertain fans of Daphne du Maurier and Mary Stewart while gaining new ones for Llewellyn as well.
- HARRIET LITTLE
Along Came a Spider.
By James Patterson. Warner. $5.99 (paper).
This is, without question, one of the nuttiest, sloppiest novels to come along in years. At the same time, it's so imaginative and unpredictable that it's a fast, enjoyable read. And, despite the screwiness of Patterson's plot, it's really no harder to accept than most headlines these days.
The story has to do with the kidnapping of two children by Gary Soneji. He's a megalomaniac with two personalities, or one personality and a vivid imagination - that part is left properly vague. Our hero is Alex Cross, a black homicide cop and psychologist who's brought in to work with the FBI after the kids are taken from an exclusive private school in Washington, D.C. The other central character is Jezzie Flanagan, a Secret Service supervisor on the fast track to the top.
Patterson gets the details of his settings right, from Washington neighborhoods to rural North Carolina, and his characters are believable, too.
At least, the sane ones are. As for the story itself, about the best that can be said is that it is consistently surprising. A plot line involving one of the children is so thinly sketched it doesn't ring true. Toward the end, when Patterson starts sorting it all out and answering his own questions, many readers will groan at his sheer audacity and be tempted to throw the book across the room. But on the basic what's-going-to-happen-next level, Patterson delivers. "Along Came a Spider" will make a fine mini-series.
- MIKE MAYO, Book page editor
\ Marie S. Bean is a retired pastor.\ Lynn Eckman teaches at Roanoke College.\ Harriet Little teaches at James River high school.
by CNB