Well I've had reader's block every since I got back from Brazil. Even my magazines have been piling up. I purchased a bunch of paperbacks to take with me on my trip that I knew I would not care to leave behind as I finished them.
When I got back, I found I didn't care enough to get past the first 50 pages of most of them. FLIGHT by Jan Burke started off the same way. The book opens with a description of a grizzly murder of a man and his young daughter aboard their yacht. The young son is seemingly also chopped to pieces.
"That's it." I put it down and gave it to my husband.
About 1/2 through his reading of the book, he told me that the only grizzly part of the book was that first awful chapter, and the book was actually a very good "who done it."
I reclaimed the book and continued my reading. The Looking Glass Man is someone who sets up crimes and leaves evidence so that guilty people are brought to justice, not for their killings for which they have skated through the judicial system, but for crimes that were "set ups."
As with all vigilante types, the means justifies the end and sometimes that means innocents get caught in the web.
The author does a good job of hiding the identity of the Looking Glass Man until the near end of the book. Burke interjects a lot of what I found human interest story lines within the main plot.
The last 30 pages of wrap-ups were somewhat tedious to me, but all in all an enjoyable book. It was a definate "B" read.
I had read Jan Burke quite a while ago. Her subsequent books haven't popped up on The Mystery Book Guild magazines or in reviews in Newsweek or Time so I had lost touch with her books. I am about to start another by this same author. In the meantime I'm reading The Newberry Books I have more slowly.
Respectfully Submitted,
Kathy Albers
