Synopsis
Reporter and amateur sleuth Irene Kelly joins forces with homicide detective Frank Harriman to help a youth involved in an electoral smear campaign, which leads to a lethal combination of political rivalries, satanic cults, kidnapping, and murder. 25,000 first printing.
Reviews
Politics and murder mix in the second mystery, after Goodnight, Irene , to feature Southern California newspaper reporter Irene Kelly and her homicide detective lover, Frank Harriman. Jacob Henderson, teenaged son of a district attorney candidate whose mudslinging race Irene has been covering, asks her to prevent his father's opposition from announcing that the youth is a member of a satanic cult. Sammy, Jacob's girlfriend, tells Irene that the group is pagan but not satanist. She admits, however, that she and others in the group, most of whom live in a youth shelter, fear the man in a goat's-head mask who is their new leader. That night, Frank's elderly neighbor, founder of the shelter, is found murdered, with a rough drawing of a goat's head left on her front door. Then Sammy leaves Irene a message that she has run away from the shelter, which is run by the murdered woman's grandson. After another gruesome murder and mutilation, Irene is kidnapped and taken to a remote cabin where she is systematically beaten. Graphic torture scenes and Irene's cunningly crafted escape give the tale a jagged, somewhat unexpected edge.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
A second high-profile case for Las Piernas reporter Irene Kelly (Goodnight, Irene, 1993) begins when Jacob Henderson, a teenager whose father is running for D.A., asks her to pre-empt the story that Henderson's opponent, Monty Montgomery, will be spreading about Jacob's membership in a witches' coven. It's a lie, Jacob insists; he was photographed when he tried to get his friend Sammy Garden to leave the coven for the Casa de Esperanza, a shelter run by town grandmother Althea Fremont, next-door neighbor of Irene's lover, homicide detective Frank Harriman. Everything goes as Jacob predicts, but the real story, which doesn't begin to surface until Mrs. Fremont is murdered, makes the shelter sound a lot more dangerous than the coven. By the time Irene is kidnapped--an ordeal whose lasting psychological scars Burke limns with painful precision--the symbolic trappings of witchcraft (``not Satanism,'' if you please) are already slipping away to reveal a more sordidly commonplace crime. It's a measure of Irene's determined femininity that the climactic ordeal isn't her torture by the kidnappers, but Thanksgiving dinner with Frank's mother. Now there's a gruesome scenario. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
The sequel to Goodnight, Irene ( LJ 2/1/93) depicts this reporter in the newly minted relationship she enjoys with Las Piernas (California) homicide detective Frank Harriman. Now covering the dirty politics involved in a local district attorney's race, Irene Kelly investigates slanderous allegations of Satanism and witchcraft against one candidate's teenaged son. The cultlike murder of Frank's elderly next-door neighbor, meanwhile, complicates both Irene's job and her relationship with Frank. Generally well written, a little fanciful, and lighthearted in tone. A good choice.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Tough, sassy Irene Kelly, crack news reporter, can't stay away from solving crimes. A local election turns nasty when one candidate accuses another candidate's son of being involved in a satanic cult. The kid claims he's innocent, and Irene agrees to help him prove it. That's when the human heart appears on her front porch. Soon she's been kidnapped, brutally beaten, and nearly killed. Most readers won't have much trouble figuring out whodunit, but good pacing, fast action, and appealing characters make this sequel to the popular Goodnight, Irene another winner. Irene's fans will be happy to note that Detective Frank Harriman, the star reporter's on-again, off-again love interest, again plays a major role in the story--in fact, by the end of the book, the cop and the reporter are even thinking about tying the knot. Emily Melton
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