Kiss of the Bees J. A. Jance | ISBN : 0-380-97747-8

Kiss of the Bees

Author: J. A. Jance

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Publication Date: 29 March, 2000

ISBN: 9780380977475

Pages: 400

Subjects: Mystery

Available as: Trade Cloth, 978-0-380-97747-5 Trade Cloth, 978-0-688-10922-6 Trade Paper, 978-1-58724-033-1 Trade Paper, 978-0-380-80599-0 E-Book - Epublication content package, 978-0-06-174630-7 E-Book - , 978-0-06-118661-5 E-Book - netLibrary, 978-0-06-001045-4

Description:

In Tucson, twenty years ago, a psychopath named Andrew Carlisle brought blood and terror into the home of Diana Ladd Walker and her family. When Carlisle died in prison, Diana and her husband, ex-county sheriff Brandon Walker, believed their long nightmare was finally over. They were wrong. Their beloved adopted daughter Lani has vanished -- a beautiful Native American teenager destined, according to Tohono O'othham legend, to become a woman of great spiritual power. A serial killer is dead, but his malevolence lives on in another - and now the fiend holds Lani's innocent life in his eager hands. Before he snuffs it out completely, he intends to make his young prisoner -- and, more importantly, her parents -- suffer a slow and agonizing torture. For only this will avenge his friend and mentor, his dark god, Andrew Carlisle.In Tucson, twenty years ago, a psychopath named Andrew Carlisle brought blood and terror into the home of Diana Ladd Walker and her family. When Carlisle died in prison, Diana and her husband, ex-county sheriff Brandon Walker, believed their long nightmare was finally over. They were wrong. Their beloved adopted daughter Lani has vanished -- a beautiful Native American teenager destined, according to Tohono O'othham legend, to become a woman of great spiritual power. A serial killer is dead, but his malevolence lives on in another - and now the fiend holds Lani's innocent life in his eager hands. Before he snuffs it out completely, he intend

PW Publishers Weekly

Review Source: Publishers Weekly

Review Date: 1999-12-20

Jance takes time out from her popular series featuring lawyer J.P. Beaumont (Breach of Duty) and Sheriff Joanna Brady (Outlaw Mountain) with this many-layered but overplotted suspense novel, set in the Arizona desert and suffused with the mystery and otherworldliness of Papago Indian folklore. Ex-con Mitch Johnson takes revenge on prize-winning author Diana Ladd Walker and former Tucson sheriff Brandon Walker by abducting their adopted teenage Papago daughter, Lani . (Years earlier, Brandon arrested Mitch for killing two illegal aliens; Diana blinded and maimed Mitch's prison cellmate when he attacked her.) Just as the vicious Apaches were the Papagos' most feared enemies, so the unredeemingly vile Mitch is the Walkers' relentless waking nightmare, prone to torture. As the search for Lani accelerates, the interplay among the large cast of Anglo and Indian characters, bound together by kinship, upbringing and respect or animosity, increases. The baggage they bring to the story and their interlocking relationships could overwhelm a less accomplished writer, but Jance has a sure hand. As she cuts from one set of characters to another, as well as from past to present, she creates a coherent and engrossing novel that uses the dreamlike Papago creation myth to artfully combine magic and reality; each chapter is introduced with a pertinent portion of the legend. Unfortunately, a few clunky clues stand out like beacons and when justice finally prevails, it's tied up in a package whose neatness seems more magical than real. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved