- Paperback: 240 pages
- Publisher: Scribner Book Company; Reprint edition (Feb 1 2005)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0743270215
- ISBN-13: 978-0743270212
- Product Dimensions: 20.4 x 13.5 x 1.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 91 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #317,510 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
The tough-as-nails young female sleuth who debuts here is London-based private eye Hannah Wolfe. Hired by an aging former dancer to find a lithe and pretty ballet prodigy who has gone missing, Hannah learns that young Carolyn Hamilton, whose nerves required Valium and whose tender ankles needed medication, has left a trail of impersonal postcards and some hefty credit-card debts. Hannah has barely begun to dig when Carolyn's body--which reveals that she was eight months pregnant--turns up in the Thames. The trail back to her drowning leads across the English Channel to a wealthy family and an old man close to death with no apparent heirs. A refreshing Londoner with an appealing softness under her slick, self-effacing surface, Hannah skirts cheap gumshoe patter. Everywhere she turns she sees youngsters, parents and those who want badly to become parents, and all of seem germane to her nicely resolved case and her awareness that the snooze button on her own biological clock isn't working as it used to. Dunant also wrote Snow Storms in a Hot Climate.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Kirkus Reviews
When sometime private eye Hannah Wolfe is hired to track down Carolyn Hamilton, a missing ballet dancer, it doesn't take her long to find discrepancies between Carolyn's innocuous postcards to her guardian and her disappearance from London months ago. In the meantime, though, Carolyn and her near-term fetus are dead, drowned in the Thames. A new, carefully anonymous client's commission to get to the bottom of Carolyn's death leads Hannah to the French estate where Carolyn took her last job for dying Jules Belmont, of Belmont Aviation, and his young wife Mathilde. There's need of further improbable channel-hopping and some detailed medical revelations, but strong plotting by Dunant (Snow Storms in a Hot Climate, 1988) makes it all worthwhile. Thoughtful, tough-minded Hannah compares herself to every detective under the sun but P. D. James's Cordelia Gray, whose fans should welcome her with open arms. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
Mistake number one: I should never have sublet the flat. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Mistake number one: I should never have sublet the flat. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Customer Reviews
|
There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon.ca
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.2 out of 5 stars (8 customer reviews)
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
this is a very well-written mystery, Aug 18 2006
By Sammy Madison - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Birth Marks: A Hannah Wolfe Crime Novel (Paperback)
I'm surprised that there are not a lot of glowing reviews on Amazon of "Birth Marks" by Sarah Dunant. It was first printed in 1992, and my edition was printed in 2005, so there has been plenty of time for readers to discover the Hannah Wolfe series by this excellent author. There are at least three Hannah Wolfe mysteries: "Birth Marks", "Fat Lands", and "Under My Skin". These are not re-runs of 1950s gumshoe detective stories, or old British ladies solving village mysteries. Hannah is like Bridget Jones, if Bridget doubled her IQ and went to work for a London detective agency. She's smart, young, single, urban, and hip. In "Birth Marks", Hannah is hired by an aging balarina to locate her missing protege. When she turns up in the Thames, dead and pregnant, Hannah feels compelled to track down her killer. This is a very exciting, literate mystery. If you read this one, you'll have to read all three books. They are really good.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
highly evolved, Jun 24 2008
By Julia M. Walker - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Birth Marks: A Hannah Wolfe Crime Novel (Paperback)
The dancer Hannah Wolfe was hired to find turns up dead, but that doesn't keep her from becoming a complex character. Dunant's characters are like Hirschfeld portraits - economical, vivid, and inscribed with her own maker's mark. The aging ballet mistress, the invisible cop-mentor, the eyelashes, the French beauties, they all leap off the page with very little ink needed. It's a book about people, Hannah most of all, but also her sister and her view of the world. You'll think you know the twist at the end, but you will be wrong.Sarah Dunant is a wonderful writer. Her prose is crisp and clever and so is her detective. Hannah Wolfe colors outside the lines, but carefully. Unlike VI Warshawski and Alex Tanner, Hannah doesn't go blindly/willfully into dangerous situations; she makes phone calls telling people her location - then she steps into the shadows. I wonder if the detective's feminine name is further evidence that Dunant doesn't feel she has anything to prove in these books. Hannah is a truly evolved independent professional.
The first-person narration is so witty that you'll laugh in inappropriate places. Dunant's character is monarch of the throw-away line. After her ego suffers a black-eye, Hannah comforts herself with a series of platitudes, then remarks "A poultice of cliché's brought down the swelling." She's a self-critical narrator, but ironic and sardonic rather than depressed or bitter. Hannah is such a 21st-century hero that it's a triple shame Dunant seems to have let the series lapse.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Worth an Afternoon, Feb 8 2011
By NorthShoreCanary - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Birth Marks: A Hannah Wolfe Crime Novel (Paperback)
There was nothing outstanding about this mystery in which a beautiful dancer goes missing and Hannah is put on the case. It is a better way to kill a few hours than watching most TV shows. I liked her Venus book quite a bit, so tried this more traditional Dunant. I hope she either has more of the Venus variety or is intending to write more historical mysteries. The writing in that book was lovely. Doesn't even seem like the same writer.
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
