From Publishers Weekly
Gosling ( Death Penalties ) sets up a subtle variation on a locked-room mystery on tiny Paradise Island in the Great Lakes, as Midwest detective Jack Stryker puzzles with an array of subplots and suggestions of psychological menace lurking in the backwoods (or, here, backwaters). On remote Paradise, the cottages are generally handed down among the island's original families; a narrow bridge keeps out most of the rest of the world, while the pungent, boglike Mush nearby turns away developers. Stryker, recovering from a gunshot wound, is there with his girlfriend; Daria Gray, an artist, has returned from New York to escape her psychotic husband, who, she says, is hunting her. Meanwhile, a mysterious bid is made for the Mush and the secretive Wilberforces move in, building fences and hiring security men and guard dogs. Fluidly cutting from one plot to another, Gosling adeptly juggles business intrigue, small-town gossip and psychological trickery. Stryker remains a genuine, low-key pleasure and the islanders represent a beguiling cross-section of society.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an alternate
Hardcover
edition.
From Kirkus Reviews
Daria Grey--who complained long and loud to everyone on tiny Paradise Island (ten families, most of them property owners for years) that her estranged husband was threatening her--is the number one suspect when he lies, dead, on her own front lawn. Nudged to action by his girlfriend Kate, Detective Lieutenant Jack Stryker agrees to help her childhood chum Daria--and with some steady backup from island sheriff Matt Gabriel and some humorous asides from his partner Tos (like Stryker, convalescing from wounds), he tackles the case, interviews the islanders, attends a town meeting, barely escapes from guard dogs, and eventually uncovers all the secrets of the community--including which family is smuggling wealthy Asians into the country, which islanders are in cahoots to sell their property to outsiders, and who killed more than once to protect a get-rich scheme. Easygoing study of an insular vacation enclave, with touches of romance and comedy. Nothing particularly new here, but Gosling's (Death Penalties, 1991, etc.) Blackwater Bay has charm, as do her characters. --
Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an alternate
Hardcover
edition.
