In this
third novel in her ‘Francesca Cahill’ series, Brenda Joyce is back with
yet another scintillating adventure for her young amateur sleuth. In the first two
previous books, we’ve seen how Francesca got involved in the whole detecting process
and how she meets, is inspired by and later falls in love with the Commissioner Rick
Bragg. Unfortunately, as we came to know in the last book, Rick is married and this
utterly devastates Francesca. But she simply cannot stop loving him, and both of them are
in an agony over this. Meanwhile everybody, even Calder Hart, Rick’s half-brother,
seems adamant at warning Francesca not to get involved in police matters again. Rick is
also vehement about this, but as usual, before you know it, Francesca has dived headlong
into a mystery.
But this is a bit
different than her previous two cases, as this one has a serial killer on the loose and is
considerably more difficult to solve and deadly dangerous, to boot! Francesca keeps
working at solving the case as well as dealing with her familiar familial crises, even as
her studies begin to suffer. Meanwhile, the love lives of each Cahill sibling is suddenly
greatly entangled as they find themselves torn in their affections – Francesca is
torn between the two brothers, Rick and Calder; Connie is flirting with Calder and driving
her husband Neil mad; and last but not least, Evan is torn between his fiancée’s
beautiful and predatory cousin, Bartolla and the charming but simple seamstress, Maggie
Kennedy. How things are resolved (or are they?!) and how Francesca solves the entire
grisly matter, makes for a book which is stimulating as well as fascinating!
As the author has set all
these novels in this series about a week apart in timing, the general historical and
societal atmosphere remains constant. The only thing changing are the people and their
emotional lives. As such, each book can be likened to an episode in a long-running day
time soap and indeed this series has many qualities of these soaps – complicated love
lives, murder, passion, back stabbing, jealousy, affairs, seduction, wealth, manipulation
and what not. Francesca is the principal character around whom the entire series revolves,
but there are plenty of side characters who’re equally interesting and their affairs,
equally complicated. The intensity, the passion, the intense sexuality, the emotional ebb
and flow, the deadly danger and the powerful sexual dilemma faced by the characters add a
kick to this book, which was not so prevalent in the previous ones. This edge makes this
book a spicy and very delectable read. Ms. Joyce is to be credited for not only having a
complex mystery in each of these books, but also for the detailed plot formation which not
only sustains the readers interest in this series, but also makes them crave and come back
for more, time after time!
Reviewed By Rashmi
Srinivas |
