Karen Dionne

Karen Dionne: The Wicked Sister

by

This is an excellent suspense novel, so excellent that I devoured it in a single day.  It gives a reader plenty to think about – but that’s after you’ve careened through it’s pages.  I absolutely could not stop reading.

Set in Michigan’s beautiful upper peninsula, the book alternates narratives between that of Rachel’s, in the present, and that of Jenny’s and Peter’s in the past.  It’s not immediately clear how the two connect but when they do, you really can’t look away.   Rachel is living in a mental hospital for killing her mother at age 11 and watching as her father then killed himself.  She has no memory of these events. read more

Best of the Last Decade

by

Reading all kinds of lists about the best crime novels of the past decade, I, of course, being incredibly opinionated, felt I needed to chime in.    Looking through this list one of the things that stick out, as far as my favorite reads are concerned, are a very specific sense of time and place.  Sometimes place is pre-eminent , sometimes time, sometimes both.  These books also contain some of the loveliest writing and most indelible scenes, things that remind me of why I love to read.  So in alphabetical order, my favorites of the last decade or so: read more