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The book is a forensic thriller with Eve Duncan as the main character. It was released in hardcover in January 2007.

There have been several other Eve Duncan books but it isn’t necessary to read those before reading this one. Each of Johansen’s books is a self contained story so you won’t have any major plotlines spoiled by reading them out of order.

Eve is a world renowned forensic sculptor. In the opening pages of the book we find out she has been contacted twice by a dangerous arms dealer named Luis Montalvo. He wants to hire her to come to his heavily fortressed compound in the Columbian jungle to work on a skull restoration for him but Eve has no interest in helping out a criminal.

Montalvo isn’t a man who gives up easily. He could hire another forensic sculptor, but he has made up his mind that Eve is the person he wants to do the job. He finds a way to make Eve an offer she cannot refuse when the one million dollars he offers her for the job doesn’t convince her to take it.

Montalvo then offers to help Eve find her daughter, Bonnie, along with the person who killed her. Bonnie is Eve’s daughter. She disappeared several years ago and has never been found. She is presumed dead. Eve’s biggest wish is the find Bonnie, wherever she is buried, and to bring her home to a final resting place. She also wants to find her killer and bring him or her to justice.

When Montalvo offers to find Bonnie’s killer, Eve doesn’t think he can do it. But several days later he delivers a report with three possible suspects. If she takes the job, he agrees to continue using his money and influence to find the killer and to find where Bonnie is buried.

Eve cannot say no even though she knows her significant other, Joe Quinn (ex Navy Seal) is adamant that Eve not put her own life in danger by going to Columbia to do the job. There’s another reason Eve feels compelled to take the job. Montalvo is also threatening to kill a CIA informant, his wife, and children, if she does not come and do the job.

Eve makes arrangements with the CIA to travel to Columbia, leaves Joe a note telling him where she went and telling him to not come after her, and heads to Columbia. Of course, Joe is furious and cannot stay at home wondering how she is so he travels to Columbia as well with the intention of bringing Eve back home whether she wants to leave or not.

There are some predictable plot twists as the story unfolds in Columbia, but there are some unpredictable plot twists too.

Overall it was a good book.

My rating (0-10 smilies): 7 ☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☺☺☺

Released in December 2006, True Evil  is the tenth novel by Greg Iles who was born in Germany in 1960 and now resides in Natchez, Mississippi; which is where some portions of the story told in this book take place.

After reading the book you may find yourself sleeping with one eye open, “just in case.”

Alex Morse is one of the key characters in the book.  She is a top notch hostage negotiator with the FBI, maybe the best one they have ever had.  But, during a tense situation, she went with her instincts but against direct orders.  As a result, she was shot and another agent was killed.

Alex’s punishment was demotion to regular field work but she asks another agent to cover for her while she works on solving a different case that the agency doesn’t know she is working on and will get her booted out of the agency if they find out what she’s doing.

But Alex doesn’t care.  She is trying to fulfill a promise she made to her sister as she lay on her deathbed.  Her sister Grace’s stunning revelation as she was dying was that her husband had killed her and that Alex needed to prove it and take care of Grace’s son Jamie, whom Alex is very close to.

Alex’s investigation leads her to believe that a local divorce lawyer is someone how caught up in something evil because he has had several rich clients who spouses have all died suspicious deaths.  The strange thing though is that most of the deaths are from cancer and it takes twelve to eighteen months for the spouses to die.  Alex suspects some sort of exposure to a cancer causing agent.

Alex finds herself in Natchez, Mississippi, telling a doctor that she thinks he is going to be the next victim to die because his wife has recently visited the suspicious divorce lawyer.  The doctor is very disbelieving but Alex needs to convince him to take the threat seriously and to work with her to help catch the murderer or murderers and to save his life.

The book has a good plot and has enough plausible information about viruses and ways to cause cancer at will to be scary because it’s not too hard to believe something like this could really happen.  To me that’s the hallmark of a great story.  There’s lots of suspense in the book along with several plot twists that had me practically holding my breath during several of the pages at the end of the book.

If you like fiction thriller books, this is a good one.

My rating (0-10 smilies):  8  ☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☺☺

This book was released in its hardcover edition in August of 2006. The paperback edition of it will be available starting April 24, 2007.

Meghan and Bridget are the two main characters in the book but it is told in narrative fashion by Bridget. She is in her early 40’s, is working at a women’s shelter in the Bronx in New York City, isn’t married but has been seeing a man for the past for years who is more than 20 years older than she is, has a close relationship with her older sister Meghan and her husband Evan, and is like a second Mom to Meghan and Evan’s son Leo.

Meghan and Bridget formed their tight bond with each other as children when their parents died and they went to live with their Aunt and Uncle who raised them with a lot of love.

Meghan seems to have it all, and she does. She has a great career as a morning talk show host, a husband who loves her, and a great son. Then in a few short moments everything seems to cave in around it. She is doing an interview with a famous guy who has left his wife to be with the surrogate mother they hired to carry their baby. When the show goes to commercial break, Meghan mutters two expletives about the guy that end up on the air because her microphone had not been turned off. Meghan just did a big “no, no” by saying words on National Television that are of the type that are supposed to be “bleeped out.”

To me, that is one of the most ironic things in the whole book. The world we live in today is filled with violence, death, and tragedy; yet if a newscaster swears on the air in the United States it is a big problem and gets a lot of people’s underwear all tied up in knots (metaphorically speaking). The truth is that most 10 year olds have probably hear swear words worse than the ones the character in the book lets fly, either in school, from friends, during an unguarded moment from a parent (hitting your thumb with a hammer is a moment that comes to mind because that was the one time I heard my Mom let loose with a long string of swear words), or from movies that shouldn’t be watching. Yet the powers that govern television in the United States spend a lot of time worrying about whether or not someone has violated morality standards.

In the book, as expected, Meghan is relieved of her on air duties while the FCC investigates and decides what it deems to be a suitable punishment. Meghan was supposed to take a vacation in the next week or so anyway so she decides to leave for that vacation early and takes herself off to a remote part of Jamiaca. We find out later that Meghan finding out her husband is leaving her may have been part of the reason those swear words came out of her mouth.

Meghan cuts herself off from the world after the “incident” including from Bridget who is beside herself with worry because it takes several days for her to get any contact with Meghan, and then it is only through a fax.

Then the plotline of the book starts to lag. The only thing that kept me engaged in the book was Ms. Quindlen’s writing which is phenomenal. She is an excellent writer. The middle of the book spends a lot of time with Bridget at her job and trying to help make a difference for the women who come to her shelter while also showing the realities of how many of those women end up back with their abusive husbands or boyfriends, back doing drugs, or just struggling to live in the projects where violence is as much a part of everyday life as waking up and seeing the sun rise is for some people. It doesn’t “sugar coat” things, nor does it exploit them either.

Bridget eventually goes to visit Meghan in Jamica because Meghan refuses to come home. Bridget is upset with her sister and let her know that it is not fair to her son to be hiding out while he has to deal with his parents breaking up and his Mom falling from her job with disgrace. In one poignant moment during Bridget’s visit to Meghan, when Meghan says that Bridget should tell her son to come visit her so they can talk, Bridget tell her that Leo (Meghan’s) son gets to be the child and she needs to be the grownup.

In the 75 pages or so, the story picks up again. Bridget gets surprising personal news and Meghan does come back to New York, but suddenly.

I’m going to recommend the book, but only because of its writing, not because of the storyline which I think is a little weak. The writing is good enough though to warrant getting the book and reading it.

My rating (0-10 smilies): 5 ☻☻☻☻☻☺☺☺☺☺

This is the second novel by Julia Glass.  Her first was “Three Junes” which was a national best-seller.  Having not read “Three Junes” yet, I decided to read “The Whole World Over” based on the great reviews given to “Three Junes.”

In this book, Greenie Duquette, a bakery owner in Manhattan, supplies some of the area restaurants with her fabulous pastries.  Walter is one of her good customers and a good friend as well.  Ray McCrae, the governor of New Mexico, tastes Greenie’s coconut cake while at Walter’s restaurant and falls in love with Greenie’s cooking.  Greenie is wooed into taking the chef’s job at the governor’s mansion.

Greenie takes the job even though her husband is not thrilled about it.  Their marriage isn’t doing so well, so Greenie uses the move to New Mexico as a way to get away.  At first she hopes her husband Alan will decide to join her.  He uses his psychiatric practice in New York as a reason to not move with her even though his patients have been dwindling and Greenie has been the one earning the majority of their income.  Greenie and Alan do stay in touch while she’s in New Mexico, often only because of their son George who is in New Mexico with Greenie.

Then Greenie runs into someone from her past who is now living in New Mexico and has an affair with him.  It’s about this same time that Alan decides he is willing to move to New Mexico, but now Greenie is no longer sure what she wants.

This isn’t the only storyline in the book.  There’s also Saga, who was injured in an accident and who now has a difficult time remembering things.  She’s currently living with her uncle.  Saga and Alan meet and develop a friendship.

Then there’s Walter, the friend of Greenie’s that recommended her to the governor of New Mexico for the job.  He’s worried about being alone for the rest of his life.  There’s some very sobering moments in the book as Walter thinks about the many friends he has lost to AIDS.  Walter invites his nephew to New York to spend time with him and learn the restaurant business.

The timeline of the book includes, September 11, 2001, which as expected includes moments of confusion, terror, and sadness for the characters in the book.

After I finished reading the book, I was relieved because I didn’t enjoy the book the way I had hoped but I was also determined to read the entire book before passing judgment on it.  Julia Glass is a good writer, but the story seems disjointed at times and doesn’t flow.   The large number of characters in the book may have had something to do with it along with the sometimes overwhelming amount of detail that bordered on boring.  I was also a little offended at the way she portrayed some of the characters.  For example, she made Ray McCrae into a stereotypical brash and rough at the edges cowboy.

For me, the best part of the book were the pages devoted to 9/11 attack and the character’s handling of that terrible event, but I almost didn’t get to that part because it’s later in the book and I was about to give up reading it when I was in the middle of it because I just wasn’t enjoying it.

I wouldn’t go out of my way to purchase this book because it’s not one I would want to come back to and read again at a later date.  If you want to read this book, borrow a copy of it from your local library.

My rating (0-10 smilies):  3 ☻☻☻☺☺☺☺☺☺☺

This book is a collection of stories from many different contributors that all have one theme in common – knitting or the fibers used in knitting.  The stories are from people who knit, who spin yarn, who know people who knit, have received knitted gifts, and who are young, middle-aged, old, married, single, in a relationship, male or female.  There’s at least one story in the book that almost anyone can relate to.

It’s a good book to keep in your vehicle or purse for those times you have a few spare minutes and you want something to do; like when you’re waiting for a child to get done with an after school practice, while waiting in the doctor’s or dentist’s office for an appointment, etc.  None of the stories are more than a few pages long so one can be read in just a few moments.

My favorite part of the book is at the back.  There’s a section that lists the authors of the stories and tells a little bit about them.

My favorite funny story in the book is by Anne McKee.  She wrote about her friend who owned an Old English Sheepdog named Ben who shed a lot.  Her friend, who had taught herself to knit in a short time and who became a proliferate knitter of many things including scarves.

One afternoon while cleaning, Anne’s friend came to the realization that Ben’s white and gray fur would make a wonderful sweater so she collected all of Ben’s stray fur and carefully spun it into wool.  Anne admitted the yarn made from Ben’s fur was attractive.

Anne’s friend used that yarn to make a gorgeous sweater for herself.  A few weeks after the sweater was finished Anne and her friend were out and about when a rainstorm hit.  They both were getting soaked so they ran to the nearest shop to wait out the rainpour.  While standing in the shop, Anne started to notice a very unpleasant smell, one that was far worse than Ben had ever smelled when he was wet.  The odor must have permeated the store because Anne and her friend were asked to leave.  It took Anne’s friend 3 showers to get the smell of that wet dog hair sweater off her!

The story in the book I found the saddest and most touching was submitted by Harry Kelley.  He talks about lying about having made a sweater he was wearing because he couldn’t bring himself to say his partner Richard had knit it but he died so now Harry was wearing it.  He also talks about James who died and whose sweaters he cherishes and about Jim, who is alive and whom Harry taught to knit.  Jim decided to knit a sweater for Harry but Harry didn’t to accept it.  A part of him felt that the sweater would survive Jim; that he would lose him too.

Harry also talks about how he helped stitch the AIDS quilt that is still touring the country and about square he made for James.  Harry is a man who has suffered great losses and yet has learned to appreciate life and be grateful for what he does have.  Knitting has in a small way helped him.

There are many other stories in the book.  Some of them are very good; others aren’t as good; and there’s even a few that I felt were pretty bad.

It’s definitely a book for knitters, whether they are new or seasoned pros because I think it would be hard to relate to some of the stories if a person has never tried to take two knitting needles and produce something with it.

It’s not a great book; but it’s a good book.
My rating (0-10 smilies):  6 ☻☻☻☻☻☻☺☺☺☺

This is the sixth book in a series called the “Revenge of the Sisterhood” series. The entire series is all about “girl power.”

With some books that are part of a series it’s not necessary to read the books in the order they were written to be able to enjoy each of the books to the fullest. That’s not the case with this series of books though. If you read them out of order you’ll know too much of the plotline of the other books which will spoil the suspense of them and make them too predictable which when then likely lead you find the books boring.

Because I’ve been reading the series as it’s been released I feel like I’ve gotten to know each of the main characters pretty well and find myself wanting to find about more about them and how things are going in their lives.

If there’s one thing I think Fern Michael’s does extremely well in these books, it is how she has developed each of the characters into very distinct people that readers want to cry for, laugh with, cheer on, and get to know better.

Each of the books in the series focuses on one of the members of the Sisterhood and how the group helps extract revenge for the wrong that woman has suffered.

In Lethal Justice, the Sisterhood focuses on carrying out revenge for Alexis. She used to be a successful financial broker with many elderly clients who adored her. But her two employers, Roland Sullivan and Arden Gillespie, defrauded those elderly clients of Alexis’s and set Alexis up to take the fall for their crime. While Arden and Roland were out spending the money they stole from Alexis’s clients, Alexis spent a year in jail and lost her broker’s license.

Because it is now Alexis’s turn for justice, the members of the Sisterhood meet to discuss how to best bring the Sisterhood’s form of justice to Roland and Arden. An elaborate scheme is set up to draw the two of them into a trap that the Sisterhood hopes they will be too greedy to resist.

There’s several twists and turns that keep the story entertaining because what the women of the Sisterhood are doing is risky. If they get caught, all of them, including Alexis will end up in jail and prison is the one place Alexis does not want to have to experience a second time.

Although the storyline is un-realistic and unbelievable at times, it’s entertaining which is exactly what I look for in a fiction book. If I want a big dose of reality I can read the newspaper.

It’s a good book in a good series that I recommend reading.

My rating (0-10 smilies): 8 ☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☺☺

This is the story of three teenage boys; Eric, Kent and Tad. They, along with the families, spend their summer in Phantom Lake. All three boys and their families are from the Chicago area; and for the past several years Kent and Tad’s families have spent their summers in Phantom Lake (a fictitious town in Wisconsin) enjoying themselves.

Eric has spent time during the summer in Phantom Lake with his friends, but his worry wart mother has never wanted to spend time there. But this year even Eric’s dad is working to convince Eric’s Mom they should spend their summer there even though all the Dads will only be there part of the time because they still need to work.

Eric’s family gets the last rental available, a house that hasn’t been lived inhabited for years and whose owner, Dr. Darby, has been missing for several years.

Eric and his friends find strange things in a room in the carriage house; some of them in a hidden room behind a wall that’s been bricked up and sealed. There is a special table, among other things. None of them look like they are worth much, but according to Dr. Darby’s journal, he paid a lot of money for each of the items he collected.

The boys find that when they are in the hidden room time flies by and they also notice a special energy and voices trying to talk to them when they are in there. They eventually start to take the items they find and reassemble (every one of them in some way has been taken apart.) For instance, there’s a white table with only three of its legs on and a hacksaw with the blade taken out. After the boys put the items back together, terrible things start to happen.

The boys also eventually discover that Dr. Darby worked with serial killers and that those items he paid lots of money for were owned by some of the most notorious.

There are some stereotypical characters in the book. Adam Mosler is one of them. He’s an angry teenage “townie” who resents the “summer boys” coming to the area and getting in his way. There are several conflicts in the book between Adam, Adam’s friends, and Eric, Kent, and Tad.

Another character pivotal to the book is Logan. He was once a patient of Dr. Darby’s. Apparently Dr. Darby told Logan to keep things in the carriage house safe. Logan isn’t sure what to do when the boys find them but he keeps watch and does what he feels he needs to.

It’s a creepy and disturbing book, but the plot didn’t seem that well developed to me. The story crawled along through most of the book, with the only good part being the last several pages; with the notable exception of the ending which was kind of lame.

For me, a large part of the book was boring. But I continued to read because I read one of the author’s other books and really liked it. John Saul has been writing for many years. This is his 33^rd novel and several of his other novels have best-sellers.

If you’re a die-hard John Saul fan, read the book. If not, don’t waste your time on it. It’s just not that good.

My rating (0-10 smilies): 3 ☻☻☻☺☺☺☺☺☺☺

My local library has a program each year that encourage everyone to read and discuss the same book. They make a bunch of the selected book available so several people can check it out at the same time. This year’s book is Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. It’s the 50^th anniversary edition of the book which was first published in 1953.

I didn’t know what to expect when I read it. I picked it up just because it was part of this year’s reading program. I figured it had to be a decent book because it’s the winner of a National Book Award.

Guy Montag is the main character of the book. He is employed as a fireman, but a fireman in this book that is set sometime in the future is not a person who puts out fires but a person who starts fires. All houses have been fireproofed so there is no need for people to put out fires.

Books have been banned because it causes people to think too much. Instead people learn from their televisions. Watching TV is a highly interactive process that, in many cases, has taken the place of friendships with people. People save to purchase wall-tv’s for their living rooms. Guy and his wife Mildred have three walls and Mildred really wants the fourth one. But each one costs $2,000 which is one-third of Guy’s yearly income.

The book starts with Guy at a fire and describes the pleasure he gets from burning books. He enjoys spraying kerosene (the fire hoses spray kerosene to start the fires instead of water to put them out) and watching the pages of the books crackle, sizzle, and burn up.

After leaving work that night, he meets one of his new neighbors, Clarisse. She’s only seventeen but seems to know much of a world that allowed people choices and allowed them to read books. Clarisse asks Guy if it was true that firemen once put out fires rather than start them. Guy laughed and said no, that houses have always been fireproof.

Clarisse goes on talking to Guy and tells him a story about her uncle. She said her uncle was once jailed for two days for going too slow on the highway. He had been going 40 miles per hour.

It’s a strange world that Guy lives in. Houses no longer have porches because that encouraged people to sit around and relax and talk. Instead people are now encouraged to go to fun parks and always on the go and doing something because then they aren’t thinking about things. Billboards are now 200 feet long because cars drive so fast it’s the only way to be able to read them.

Guy and Clarisse soon don’t talk any longer because Clarisse has disappeared. Guy realizes she is dead. He starts thinking about his life, his job as a fireman whose duty it is to burn books and the houses they were hidden in, and about books themselves. He suddenly finds himself wanting to look inside one. Major events unfold from that defining moment in Guy’s life.

The book is disturbing to read because it describes as world where the lawmakers have enforced a high level of censorship and control over people’s lives because books are no longer a part of them. It’s a world of unrest and unhappy people who think nothing of killing themselves to escape it. But, while the book is disturbing it is also thought provoking. How much censorship should there be? Should people be allowed to read and see whatever they wish?

The edition of the book I read, the 50^th anniversary edition, includes an afterword by the author where he describes how he wrote the book. He said he realized he was writing an actual dime novel when he wrote it in 1950 because he typed the book on a typewriter in the basement typing room at the University of California in Los Angeles where 30 minutes of typewriter usage cost 10 cents. It is where the author raced against 30 minute increments getting his novel typed out. It cost him nine dollars and eighty cents in dimes to finish the first draft which was originally called The Fire Man but was later changed to Fahrenheit 451.

If you’re looking for some light reading while sitting in front the fireplace or while on the beach, don’t take this book along. But do read it sometime. While you may agree or disagree with many things in the book, it will likely get you thinking. While reading the book you will be engaged in Guy’s struggle with himself to figure out what is right, what is wrong, and what he should do – the right things or the wrong things.

My rating (0-10 smilies): 8 ☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☺☺

As part of my ongoing tribute to Sidney Sheldon, who passed away recently, I’m re-reading his novels and reviewing them. He was a wonderful writer. I came to know his writing through reading his fiction books. If you haven’t read his books, I suggest you do. If you have read them, this might be a good time to go back and read them again.

Memories of Midnight by Sidney Sheldon

This book is a sequel to “The Other Side of Midnight.” Read that book before reading “Memories of Midnight;” otherwise the surprise ending of “The Other Side of Midnight will be ruined. I’ll try to give you an idea of was this book, the sequel is about, without giving away the storyline of “The Other Side of Midnight.”

“Memories of Midnight” was released in hardcover in 1990 and is Sidney Sheldon’s 10^th novel. This book highlights two of the main characters from “The Other Side of Midnight,” Catherine Alexander Douglas and Constantine Demiris. In this book we find out that Catherine survived the attempt made on her life by her husband Larry Douglas, and Larry’s girlfriend Noelle Page (Noelle was also the mistress of Constantine Demiris).

Catherine had lost her memory, but it’s starting to come back to her. Constantine is worried that Catherine’s memory is going to start remembering things he’d rather keep a secret so he sends her to London to work for him and assigns people to keep an eye on her and report back to him. Meanwhile he starts to order the murder of people who know Catherine’s true identity and that she is still alive.

Like Sidney Sheldon’s other books, there are plot twists that change things in a heartbeat. Suddenly Catherine finds out that someone is trying to kill her. You may think you know how the book is going to end, but a truly great and shocking ending awaits.

Like most sequel books, I don’t think it’s quite as good as the first one but is still very good.

My rating (0-10 smilies): 9 ☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☺

In tribute to Sidney Sheldon, a great writer who passed away January 30, 2007 at the age of 89, I’m going to review his books. If you were a reader of popular fiction in the 1980’s and early part of the 1990’s, you probably read a few of his books.

Sheldon was quoted in a 1992 interview as saying, “I try to write my books so the reader can’t put them down. I try to construct them so when the reader gets to the end of a chapter, he or she has to read just one more chapter. It’s the technique of the old Saturday afternoon serial: Leave the guy hanging on the edge of the cliff at the end of the chapter.” That’s the exact reason why I loved his books so much. They were exciting, with lots of unexpected plot twists that left me hanging and wanting to continue reading. And I often did keep a book open longer than planned. There were many nights where I started a book and was still reading at 2 am even though I needed to be up in a few hours to go to work.

He was, and still is, my all-time favorite author.

All the books I’m going to review are still available in paperback. If you want a hardcover edition borrow a copy from your local library or visit a used bookstore.

I’ll start my reviews of Sheldon’s books with one of my favorites: “The Other Side of Midnight.”

This is one of Sidney Sheldon’s earliest novels, his second, released in hardcover in 1973. It’s also one of his best.

There are four main characters whose lives touch each other – Noelle Page, Catherine Alexander, Larry Douglas, and Constantine Demiris.

There’s a sequel to this book, “Memories of Midnight” which is good too, but if you read both books you might find the same inconsistency that I did. In “The Other Side of Midnight” Constantine’s wife Melina is said to have told her parents that her powerful husband had had many affairs; but in “Memories of Midnight” it says that Melina lost both of her parents when she was still a child. Whoops! It’s a small inconsistency but one you might have fun watching for.

There’s a small error in “The Other Side of Midnight” too – one that I missed but a friend of mine had found so I went back and read the book again to find it. Israel Katz, Noelle’s doctor friend, has his right leg amputated. Later in the book it’s his left leg that was amputated. It’s another small “whoops” that’s not a big deal but something to watch for. It certainly doesn’t diminish the overall plot and quality of the book.

In “The Other Side of Midnight,” Noelle and Larry meet. Noelle falls in love. Larry asks her to marry him. Larry is a pilot in the war (the book is set in the 1940’s during World War II). Larry leaves, saying he’ll be back, but he doesn’t come back. He’s off fighting the war and seducing other women. Noelle is crushed. She then finds out she’s pregnant. At this point she starts to mentally lose it. She vows revenge against Larry and anyone he cares about, and she seeks that revenge in horrible ways.

Larry, meanwhile, becomes a decorated fighter pilot. He meets Catherine while she is in California overseeing a short movie shoot for a government film. Although Catherine is in love with her boss, a nice man named William Fraser, she falls for Larry’s charm and ends up marrying him (something that fuels Noelle’s rage even more when she finds out about it).

Even though Noelle spends many of her waking moments plotting her revenge against Larry, she does pursue a career and becomes a famous actress in Europe. Because the story is set in the 1940’s, there are subplots about the Nazi invasion and about what life was like when a person’s country is occupied by enemy forces.

One of the most interesting subplots involves Noelle’s doctor friend Israel Katz, who becomes an underground rebel fighter and a person the German army is trying hard to find so they can punish and make an example of him. When he’s in a really tight spot he seeks Noelle’s help.

Constantine Demiris is a powerful man from Greece. He owns his own island. He becomes tangled in the lives of Noelle, Larry, and Catherine. He has an affair with Noelle and falls under her spell. Because of Noelle’s persistence and recommendation, Constantine hires Larry as his personal pilot. Although Catherine’s relationship with Constantine is a small one in this book, pay attention to it because that relationship becomes a focal point of “Memories of Midnight” – the sequel to this book.

The story moves along quickly with lots of suspense and drama. Larry’s job as Constantine’s personal pilot is all part of her elaborate plan for revenge. But in some ways the surprise is on her. When she meets up with Larry again after several years, she finds out he doesn’t recognize or remember her.

I had a hard time putting this book down. It seemed every chapter added a new plot twist and more suspense.

My rating (0-10 smilies): 10 ☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻☻