Blood Relations

Rating:
Summary: A Well-Written Mystery Thriller With A Cliffhanger Ending!!
Review: A teenage model is raped in the VIP room of an upscale South Beach nightclub in front of a cast of characters right out of a Fellini film. The three perpetrators are all prominent, high profile men. Dade County officials and Miami Beach's city manager do not want the case brought to trial because of potential bad publicity and its impact on tourism. The decision to try the case is up to Sam Hogan, head of Major Crimes for Dade County. Hogan's boss, the state attorney, is being considered for the US Vice Presidential slot in the upcoming national election and Hogan wants his job.

Many of the witnesses to the crime are "beautiful people," involved in the fashion industry, as was Hogan's only son Matthew. Matthew was a model who was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident a year or so before this incident. Dina Hogan, Sam's wife, has never recovered from her son's death. The investigation and interaction with the people who her son knew so well, including Sam's ex-mistress, causes Dina to unravel and distance herself even more from her husband and their daughter. Then a major witness, and a close friend of Matthew's, is found murdered and a sequence of unsettling events begins.

Barbara Parker has written a complex suspense thriller with an intricate plot filled with unexpected twists and turns, chilling suspense and a real cliffhanger ending. I am fairly good at solving mysteries but this one had me stymied. The characters who populate the novel are what make this book so unique. I found myself absorbed with them and thought about them at times when not reading. They are very realistic, not at all contrived, and very human in their desires, ambitions, greed, grief and motivations. The glamour of the fashion industry and the lowdown on the Miami/South Beach drug/crime scene and court system are added pluses. The South Florida setting and legal system is well researched and Ms. Parker certainly knows her way around the courtroom. I highly recommend this. It is a well-written book and an excellent read.
JANA

Rating:
Summary: Excellent, Non-Stop Action
Review: I am a fan of Mary Higgens Clark and found this novel to rival her best. It was suspensful, fast paced and full of surprises. I loved it.

Rating:
Summary: Too much.
Review: This book had the potential to be an intriguing suspense however too many characters, too many subplots and an anticlimactic ending made it a disappointing read. I didn't count but I believe there were at least twenty characters introduced with a brief explanation of his/her history and at least three sub-plots.I found myself scanning the subplots to hurridly get to the main plot of murder and to the main characters of Sam, Caitlin, Dina and Frank only to lead to an ending that left too many unanswered questions and the reader,me, who lumbered through the 438 pages actually wanting to read more to get some satisfaction and closeure to the story. I found it too cumbersome to remember how everything and everyone related to the main story if in fact they did. If you enjoy stories within a story you may tolerate this. It wasn't my favorite. I am not however, going to let this one book, since this is the first I've read by this author, dissuade me from trying another by this author.