From Publishers Weekly
Canadian Bowen's latest, after Love and Murder , is a harrowing look at the difficulties faced by those trying to break away from the effects of an abusive childhood. University instructor Joanne Kilbourn is horrified when her grown daughter Mieka finds the body of Bernice, a teenaged office cleaner, hanging out of a dumpster. Although it looks as though Bernice is another victim in a series of prostitute killings, significant details--including a teddy bear tattoo on the girl's buttocks--persuade police that it is a copycat murder. Concurrently, Mieka prepares for her wedding and Jo's son Peter is pursued by obsessive Christy Sinclair. When Christy becomes an apparent suicide, Jo is surprised to find herself listed as Christy's next of kin; then she learns that Christy also had a teddy bear tattoo. Investigating both deaths, Jo and her TV news director friend Jill run up against an unsavory secret being kept on an island in the northern Canadian woods. This poignant story exposes the danger that can hide in good intentions as Jo's efforts uncover the surprising identity of a sex ring's mastermind and put her young adopted daughter Taylor in danger.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Kirkus Reviews
Once again, Bowen's Canadian earth mother/university teacher Joanne Kilbourn has to wrestle with the everyday hurt of family love: her daughter Mieka is planning a wedding to the daughter of the politically conservative Harris family; her son Peter's unsuitable girlfriend Christy Sinclair has just popped up again; and Joanne has adopted Sally Love's young daughter Taylor (Love and Murder, 1993). Then there's also the catastrophic hurt of violent death: Mieka's young cleaning woman, a former hustler, seems to be the latest in a series of murders by spurned pimps; Christy, branded by a similar teddy-bear tattoo, dies after a barbiturate cocktail, having listed Joanne (why?) as her next of kin. It's no surprise that the roots of these mysteries are deeply entwined in personal threats to the family life Joanne would so dearly love to protect--or that she deals with those threats with unsurpassed sensitivity. With her rare talent for plumbing emotional pain, Bowen makes you feel the shock of murder and other horrors as acutely as she does her most reasonable fears about her children's lovers. --
Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
