Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 5, 1995 TAG: 9511030044
SECTION: BOOK PAGE: F-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
By Sidney Sheldon. Morrow. $24.
Harry Stanford, one of the wealthiest men in the world, dies suddenly and mysteriously. His legitimate children gather to bury him and to hear the reading of the will. Strangely, they are joined by not one but two women who claim to be the same illegitimate daughter. But that's not even as bizarre as the lives that the acknowledged Stanford daughter and sons have been living.
"Morning, Noon and Night" is vintage Sheldon. One of the most talented storytellers working today, he creates a world of glittering people who generally lead lives of scandal and desperation in glamorous places. In most of his novels, Sheldon is enchanted by them, but in this one, he seems to be disgusted with his cast of characters, and that pulls down the rest of the story.
- JUDY KWELLER
The Alpine Fury: An Emma Lord Mystery.
By Mary Daheim. Ballentine Books. $5.99 (paper).
"The Alpine Fury" is another entry in the series about an editor of a small town newpaper who continually finds herself involved in murder and mayhem. (Emma Lord's Alpine, Wash., must be a lot like Jessica Fletcher's Cabot Cove. How can so many homicidal people end up in two small towns?)
Problems loom at the Alpine bank when customer accounts are mishandled. The Petersons who have managed the bank for decades and play a major role in Alpine social and civic life are at odds. When the body of a family member who was also the bank's accountant is found dumped in a wooded area on a "lover's lane" outside of town, the pressure is on. Emma and her friend, Vida, try to help the overworked and understaffed sheriff solve the crime; even though the sheriff, Milo Dodge, doesn't particularly appreciate their efforts.
This latest Alpine mystery again has as its strengths the lumber town setting and the interwoven relationships among the townsfolk. Family ties, old secrets and the patterns of small town life are more believable and more central to the story than the murder and its solution, which seem almost incidental.
- ANNA WENTWORTH
CRANKS AND SHADOWS.
By K. C. Constantine. Mysterious Press. $19.95.
ILL WIND.
By Nevada Barr. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $19.95.
"Cranks and Shadows" is the 11th and presumably final installment in a series of novels about Mario Balzic, the weary, aging police chief of a weary, aging steel town in Pennsylvania.
If the range of the premises of most mystery novels is from adequate to silly, "Cranks and Shadows" is the exception. Indeed, it might be said to be all premise; the mystery, such as it is, is secondary to the real story line: Balzic's retirement. No thriller, this is a grittily authentic portrait of a small town in trouble and of one of its leading citizens.
Nevada Barr, author of "Ill Wind," is a National Park Service ranger, as is her protagonist Anna Pigeon. This third in a series is set in Mesa Verde National Park in southwest Colorado. The novel features well-drawn characters, and a story with a satisfactorily rational denouement.
But the real star is the park itself. Mesa Verde is filled with the silent, eerie evidence of an advanced cliff-dwelling civilization that vanished, for reasons unknown, nearly a millenium ago; the setting imparts to "Ill Wind" a special air of mystery.
- GEOFF SEAMANS
Judy Kweller is a public-relations free-lancer.
Anna Wentworth also reviews books and plays for WVTF-FM.
Geoff Seamans is associate editor of The Roanoke Times editorial page.
by CNB