Edge of Evil
- ISBN13: 9780060828417
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
The end of her high-profile broadcasting career came too soon for TV journalist Alison Reynolds—bounced off the air by executives who wanted a “younger face.” With a divorce from her cheating husband of ten years also pending, there is nothing keeping her in L.A. any longer. Cut loose from her moorings, Ali is summoned back home to Sedona, Arizona, by the death of a childhood friend. Once there she seeks solace in the comforting rhythms of her parents’ diner, the… More >>
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5 Comments »
I read a lot of mystery and picked this up at CostCo on a whim. Once in awhile I’ll stumble onto a good author I’ve never heard of that way. Not this time.
Nance’s portrayal of genders is so stereotypical and facile, I couldn’t believe she’s so popular. Maybe her other work is better, or maybe she’s appealing to a certain reader. Men who practice domestic violence, men who leave their middle-aged wives for a “babe” (whoops, sorry Ali); it’s just so stereotyped and overworked. Yes, it happens, but it also happens the other way.
There simply isn’t any depth to the characters. The blog parts actually made me wince in embarassment for the author (the real one).
By the middle of the book I had figured out who the murderer was, and didn’t care what happened to Ali or anyone else. For good work in the genre, with multidimensional, complex, and nuanced characters, I’d recommend Patricia Cornwell any day (both the Scarpetta and the Andy Brazil series). These are real humans.
Rating: 1 / 5
This is J.A. Jance at her worst and the readers simpering narrations doesn’t help.
Rating: 1 / 5
I, too, am a HUGE JA Jance fan and have corresponded with her on several occasions about our Cancer trials. I absolutely love her Joanna Brady series and am eagerly awaiting her newest one this summer. I read Edge of Evil and liked it pretty well. We need to give Judith a chance to let her build Ali’s character. Since Ali is NOT a detective or police officer, she will be investigating murders through her blog, I would think. I think having a blog in the mix is of great interest, as so many authors are now having their own blogs. I feel very sad about all the bashing here. How many here could write like Judith? I have dear friends that are authors and they write such excellent suspense novels. My good friend is a revciewer like myself and has her own blog. My BIL has his own, as he is an author. So, let’s give Judith and Ali a chance to grow!!!!!!
Rating: 3 / 5
Some books never get off the ground, and Edge of Evil is one of them. The plot hinges on three debacles, TV anchorwoman Ali’s ageist dismissal from her job, the death of Ali’s fatally ill best friend in a car accident, and the death of Ali’s own marriage. Her son talks her into starting a blog about her tribulations, and, of course, its popularity blossoms immediately. Ali uses her blog, Cutloose, as a vehicle of adjustment, and begins to see the silver lining in the clouds of her personal problems. She’s convinced that her friend’s death was neither suicide nor an accident, and doggedly pursues the facts while dodging violent attempts upon her own life by various sub-characters.
All of this should make for an interesting thriller, but there are no thrills. There’s a lot of whining, a lot of empathy, and a minor blip at the end. There are salt of the earth family members and despicable husbands. But it all adds up to light summer reading but nothing more.
Rating: 2 / 5
“la vie ressemble plus souvent à un roman qu’un roman ne ressemble à la vie” *
– George Sand (1833)
A far cry from the societal and family norms once treasured and embodied in Wilder’s Our Town, the stage atmosphere of The Edge of Evil is the social fabric of today’s America. The life mobile once reverently held and symmetrically balanced with the three strands of daily living, love-marriage, and death-eternity, are slowly being severed. Our lopsided national character is now steeped in anxieties and breakups. The ties holding normalcy together are fraying and weakening. It is in this backdrop we find Ali Reynolds’ life center teeters on the verge of collapsing.
Already feeling raw from a wrongful termination as a Los Angeles television news personality, Ali Reynolds receives nary a solaced embrace nor soothing lips from network executive and husband. Wilting under his accusing and narcissistic rants, emptiness drowns her. When hearing her long time friend is missing, it’s the clarion call for Ali to return to the succor of her childhood home for a respite, and learn the where about of Reenee Bernard. So the forty-something Reynolds and her heart, accompanying by college senior son, jettisons the hubris of a cast television persona and leaves southern California behind.
Sedona, Arizona, named after the wife of settler and postmaster Carl Schnebly. The hub of the Red Rock Country, Sedona radiates majestic red buttes, lush greenery, and wilderness expanse. Fused in with purported healing cosmic vortices, the intrinsic enticement of this landscape is certified. The aura of these natural phenomena propagates along the rugged serpentine Schnebly Hill Road as well.
Liken to the horizontal stroke of the letter “H”, Schnebly Hill Road had once been a vital road for ferrying goods between Sedona on the west, and Flagstaff east. This eleven-mile stretch of road hugs and slithers out the Mogollon Rim above Sedona; it is an old, rugged, and narrow cattle trail which accommodates all mortal motives with marked indifference. Whether it is he who wants to channel the healing energy vortex whirling at the Bear Wallow Canyon, or that she intends on doing a dead-on Thelma and Louise stunt six thousand feet above the town, the road asks no questions and gives no answers. It is what it is.
Upon the searchers finding Renee’s mangled body down in a canyon below Schnebly Hill Road, on this deed of dreadful note, the tale begins. Ali Reynolds, the now ex-investigative reporter, sets about to learn the reasons to the “it is what it is” cause of death to her friend: suicide.
Although this novel is tagged as a Mystery-Thriller, the whodunit theme elicits a far more stronger and deeper antiphonal pathos than other works in the genre. We attribute this verisimilar characterization to the author’s own life journey. In her formative years as a writer, Ms. Jance was subjected to much academic chastisements and life’s vicissitudes. These rebukes later served to discipline and anchor her resolve to become the author she is today; in her works, we find the quality of mercy is not strained. We see, for example, the tender pity Jance ascribes to Sam and her humans.
Samantha the cat could never be considered as the feline partner to Qwilleran in a Lilian Jackson Braun’s caper. A cat with a ragged torn ear and a missing eye, at best, might be thought of as a veteran of some territorial altercation. Or she could be the recipient of the affliction owing to someone’s cruel pleasure. Whatever the history behind Sam’s disfigurement, she now has a home. The deceased’s surviving children love her, and she them. A mutual solace. A testimony to resiliency and hopes rekindled. This tabby would later become a new strand in Ali Reynold’s yet to be reconstituted mobile, the healing vortices notwithstanding.
To find answers to her life’s persistent questions à la devise de Guy Noir, Ali forays into the Internet. It is here in this vast digital-age nebula, we see the transforming of an aloof, coiffured hair, and manicured reporter, into a softer heart and more susceptible spirit. Yet paradoxically, she is holding on to what is becoming an anachronism. Handwritten letters. She doubts the veracity of Reenee’s typewritten suicide note. To Ali, it counters the victim’s penchant for pen and ink.
By cleverly juxtaposing the two art forms of the printed word, the former English teacher Ms. Jance conveys a subtext within the story. That is, writing, however rendered, is an intrinsic and indispensable portion of being human. We all subscribe to the philosopher-dustman Alfred P. Doolittle’s uttering, ‘I’m willing to tell you. I’m wanting to tell you. I’m waiting to tell you.’ Except in writing, once the ‘Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.’
One final thought. I have a question to which Guy Noir might not have an answer. Perhaps Ms. Jance would tell us. Why would anyone wants to drive a Lexus on Schnebly Hill Road, and on a blistery snowy day?
* “life resembles more often to a novel than a novel is to life”
Rating: 4 / 5