The Kill Fee

Rating:
Summary: Is Sally Harrington losing steam- or just Laura Van Wormer?
Review: I could not wait to read the latest installment in the saga of Sally Harrington. In fact, I went to three bookstores to find it! It is really enjoyable to follow Sally's latest escapades and to follow her meteoric rise at DBS. Unfortunately, Ms. Van Wormer seems to have lost some energy for fully fleshing out her story. There should have been at least another 100 pages here to fully realize the plot line. Sally's love life is taking too many twists and she is beginning to come off as immature rather than a "victim of circumstance" as she did in the past. Rather than being a full fleshed out character, Paul is just a tool to move the plot along. In "The Bad Witness" the book concluded with some promise of Paul and Sally's relationship taking off. Paul is introduced in this new volume merely to become someone to look after Sally's mother. What a waste of Paul! I'm not sure I like where this series is going, but I sure have loved Sally Harrington up until now. Laura Van Wormer needs to get her back on track!

Rating:
Summary: Is Sally Harrington losing steam- or just Laura Van Wormer?
Review: I could not wait to read the latest installment in the saga of Sally Harrington. In fact, I went to three bookstores to find it! It is really enjoyable to follow Sally's latest escapades and to follow her meteoric rise at DBS. Unfortunately, Ms. Van Wormer seems to have lost some energy for fully fleshing out her story. There should have been at least another 100 pages here to fully realize the plot line. Sally's love life is taking too many twists and she is beginning to come off as immature rather than a "victim of circumstance" as she did in the past. Rather than being a full fleshed out character, Paul is just a tool to move the plot along. In "The Bad Witness" the book concluded with some promise of Paul and Sally's relationship taking off. Paul is introduced in this new volume merely to become someone to look after Sally's mother. What a waste of Paul! I'm not sure I like where this series is going, but I sure have loved Sally Harrington up until now. Laura Van Wormer needs to get her back on track!

Rating:
Summary: Much better, but not long enough!
Review: In Castleford, Connecticut, octogenarian Percy Harrington gives a letter he received to his great niece Sally Harrington to check into. Apparently, somehow Percy owns some property in Hillstone Falls, New York and the Western Connecticut Land Trust Company wants to buy that land.

Sally's West Coast lover, former Hollywood cop Paul Fitzwilliam has transferred to the New Haven force to attend a nearby law school at night. Her boss at DBS News Alexandra Waring is angry and upset as the brass wants Sally to take over for the ailing pregnant Jessica Wright on the latter's talk show. Alexandra offers Sally less money, but a raise if she is willing to work the am news as co-anchor with Emmett Phelps. Sally excitedly accepts, as news is what she prefers to do.

Sally learns that her uncle's five acres are in the middle of a major industrial project that has Mafia backing. The mob comes after her to insure she remains silent and her uncle sells.

The fifth Harrington tale is an engaging thriller that is incredibly realistic especially the ending, but will put off idealistic fans of the series. Sally remains a strong intrepid heroine that has made her a favorite. Still, the story line starts a bit slow as the support players are brought into focus, but once Sally crosses the state line, the action never slows down until the final checkmate occurs.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: engaging Harrington thriller
Review: In Castleford, Connecticut, octogenarian Percy Harrington gives a letter he received to his great niece Sally Harrington to check into. Apparently, somehow Percy owns some property in Hillstone Falls, New York and the Western Connecticut Land Trust Company wants to buy that land.

Sally's West Coast lover, former Hollywood cop Paul Fitzwilliam has transferred to the New Haven force to attend a nearby law school at night. Her boss at DBS News Alexandra Waring is angry and upset as the brass wants Sally to take over for the ailing pregnant Jessica Wright on the latter's talk show. Alexandra offers Sally less money, but a raise if she is willing to work the am news as co-anchor with Emmett Phelps. Sally excitedly accepts, as news is what she prefers to do.

Sally learns that her uncle's five acres are in the middle of a major industrial project that has Mafia backing. The mob comes after her to insure she remains silent and her uncle sells.

The fifth Harrington tale is an engaging thriller that is incredibly realistic especially the ending, but will put off idealistic fans of the series. Sally remains a strong intrepid heroine that has made her a favorite. Still, the story line starts a bit slow as the support players are brought into focus, but once Sally crosses the state line, the action never slows down until the final checkmate occurs.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: Much better, but not long enough!
Review: Sally Harrington's life never has a dull moment, and this book is no exception!

The Kill Fee was by far better than Ms. Van Wormer's last two efforts, Trouble Becomes Her and The Bad Witness; however, I feel there were several opportunities missed:

1. There were enough story lines going on that this could have gone into the same level of scope, detail and content that Riverside Drive and West End have.

2. This book could have easily been twice as long (it is only 300 pages).

3. Again, too much focus on Sally's getting in trouble and messed up love life (the latter seeming forced and concocted for the sake of the storyline), which sacrificed the focus on her career finally taking off.

There were several loose ends left dangling, and now we'll just have to wait another year or two for the next book, which is disappointing after waiting over a year for this one!

Don't get me wrong, after the slow start, the story picked up quickly and it was a very engrossing read, but I was disappointed when the book left all those ends dangling.

Rating:
Summary: Is there a target audience?
Review: Was the target audience for this book women or feminists? I enjoyed the book, but it seemed to go way over the top in "let's use gender casting of characters that show how far women have come in corporate/professional America". Every strong, "self-made", ethical character was a women. Sally's boss - a woman; Sally's boss' secretary - a man; the doctor who treated her - a woman; the nurse - a man. Sally herself is a rising star pulling down 6 figures, and her boy-friend is a cop struggling to get into law. The significant male characters were relegated to gangsters, aging patriarchs, slimy reporters, or love interests (although Sally's boss has solved the male lover problem). It gets annoying after a while.
Finally if you are someone who expects the end of a novel to wrap most of the loose ends, and make justice prevail, you will be disappointed.


Rating:
Summary: Poor little Sally--a million or only three hundred thousand?
Review: When her uncle gets an offer to buy five acres he doesn't even know he owns, he tasks Sally Harrington with the job of finding out what is going on. What she finds is a mob plan to build a huge polluting cement factory in the middle of her upper class idealic community. Sally wants to break the story, but she has problems of her own. Should she take the million-dollar a year job as a talk-show hostess, or stick with the news division, have more job security, but only own three hundred thousand? And then there's the tough choice between the hunky twenty-five year old cop/law student who loves her and the hunky fourty-something married man who she can't stop flirting with.

Sally's life gets more complicated when a reporter doing an interview with her gets clobbered in the middle of the interview and left for dead. Although the cover copy indicates that she's the suspect, she isn't (don't blame author Laura Van Wormer for this one--authors have no control over cover copy), but she does have problems because the Mafia really wants the five acres her uncle owns and will do just about anything to get it.

In an exciting action scene, Sally confronts a couple of mobsters with a huge Cadillac SUV and gets her T.V. anchor-person looks messed up. Unfortunately, that's about the only action THE KILL FEE has to offer and the story sort of fizzles out without any adequate resolution.

Author Laura Van Wormer is a talented writer whose effortless prose keeps the reader involved. In this story, however, I found Sally Harrington unsympathetic, wishy-washy, and given too much good fortune to be a really sympathetic heroine.