Into the Deep (The Haven)

Rating:
Summary: Excellent, fun read with outrageous characters
Review: If you are a Grisham reader, you'll love this book. This "legal" adventure specializes in Carribbean tax havens in the 1970s. I just finished the book and found it to be an excellent first novel for the author. I was delighted with her style of writing, the outrageous characters, and her knowledge of lots of exotic and unusual stuff. It has romance, sex, a few murders... The author refers to it as a mystery, but I found it to be an adventure novel. I highly recommend it as a fun read.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent, fun read with outrageous characters
Review: If you are a Grisham reader, you'll love this book. This "legal" adventure specializes in Carribbean tax havens in the 1970s. I just finished the book and found it to be an excellent first novel for the author. I was delighted with her style of writing, the outrageous characters, and her knowledge of lots of exotic and unusual stuff. It has romance, sex, a few murders... The author refers to it as a mystery, but I found it to be an adventure novel. I highly recommend it as a fun read.

Rating:
Summary: A 1970s battle of the sexes with intellectual resonance
Review: Into the Deep is a genre-defying, multi-faceted novel describing a non-functional marriage between two professional Boomers in the 1970s, and what they did about it. Protagonist Linnell Clare is a mother of one and loyal wife of Dr. Mark "Bear" Clare, a dentist who has secret, profitable illicit drug business on the side. She is also an international tax attorney, a super-mom before the term was invented. Secretive Bear resents the fact that "Ma" put together an education after motherhood, and he distrusts her. Problems come to a head on her latest trip to Cayman when "Ma" pursues her own money-making sideline, albeit legal. Misunderstanding gives rise to more understanding, breeding chaos which compounds at a frantic pace until poetic justice is served at the novel's stunning conclusion.

The novel has many brilliant moments where it is hard to put down. It also paints an interesting picture of the off-shore tax avoidance industry. But most importantly, Into the Deep is a haunting tale of a battle of the sexes within an emotionally-deadened marriage set against that cacophonious decade when a woman could be a tax attorney but still needed her husband's signature to set up a bank account. It is the story of a floundering marriage, capsized by a catastrophic shift of emotional, intellectual and professional ballast.

Rating:
Summary: A 1970s battle of the sexes with intellectual resonance
Review: Into the Deep is a genre-defying, multi-faceted novel describing a non-functional marriage between two professional Boomers in the 1970s, and what they did about it. Protagonist Linnell Clare is a mother of one and loyal wife of Dr. Mark "Bear" Clare, a dentist who has secret, profitable illicit drug business on the side. She is also an international tax attorney, a super-mom before the term was invented. Secretive Bear resents the fact that "Ma" put together an education after motherhood, and he distrusts her. Problems come to a head on her latest trip to Cayman when "Ma" pursues her own money-making sideline, albeit legal. Misunderstanding gives rise to more understanding, breeding chaos which compounds at a frantic pace until poetic justice is served at the novel's stunning conclusion.

The novel has many brilliant moments where it is hard to put down. It also paints an interesting picture of the off-shore tax avoidance industry. But most importantly, Into the Deep is a haunting tale of a battle of the sexes within an emotionally-deadened marriage set against that cacophonious decade when a woman could be a tax attorney but still needed her husband's signature to set up a bank account. It is the story of a floundering marriage, capsized by a catastrophic shift of emotional, intellectual and professional ballast.

Rating:
Summary: A must read!
Review: Just read "Into the Deep--The Haven". It's masterful. In my opinion, better than Grafton or Cornwall.

Rating:
Summary: Superlative mystery.
Review: Just read "Into the Deep--The Haven". It's masterful. In my opinion, better than Grafton or Cornwall.