{"id":1020,"date":"2013-05-31T17:28:36","date_gmt":"2013-05-31T23:28:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=1020"},"modified":"2013-05-31T17:28:36","modified_gmt":"2013-05-31T23:28:36","slug":"p-j-parrish-heart-of-ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/p-j-parrish-heart-of-ice\/","title":{"rendered":"P.J. Parrish: Heart of Ice"},"content":{"rendered":"
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P.J. Parrish \u2013 or the sisters who write as P.J. Parrish \u2013 are paperback writers in the very best sense of the word.\u00a0 They deliver a good story, well told, with reliable characters and settings, asking only that their readers enjoy the journey they deliver. Almost always, they fulfill this promise.\u00a0 With their new novel, set on Mackinac Island, I was holding my opinion in reserve.<\/p>\n

\"heartofice\"<\/a>Full disclosure:\u00a0 I grew up on Mackinac Island, so I wasn\u2019t so sure they could get it right, having read other novels set on the island that had a misfire or two (or more).\u00a0 I was at first cautious but then more and more delighted as they really seemed to \u201cget\u201d the island (and it may help that one of the sisters lives in nearby Petoskey), but after awhile the story they were telling was simply so good, the island details really didn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n

Their series hero, Louis Kincaid, has returned to Michigan after his last adventure in Florida, coming back to connect with a small daughter he didn\u2019t know he had.\u00a0 His daughter, Lily, is the entry point to the story, as Louis is out exploring the island with her when she darts away and disappears in an old house where she takes a tumble and lands on some old bones.\u00a0 That sets off a string of events that has Louis working in his capacity as a private investigator with the island police chief, who isn\u2019t too familiar with homicide procedure.<\/p>\n

The novel weaves its spell with several threads.\u00a0 One of them is the opening prologue, which finds a young man falling through the ice bridge \u2013 the part of frozen Lake Huron marked off with islanders\u2019 Christmas trees to show a safe passage back to the mainland \u2013 and it seems he has a story to tell.\u00a0 So too does Danny Dancer, living alone in the island woods with a cabin full of animal skulls \u2013 and one human one.<\/p>\n

The bones Lily falls on are also human, and Louis and the Mackinac Island Chief, Flowers, think they might be the remains of the long missing Julie Chapman.\u00a0 The only problem is, the skeleton they\u2019ve discovered has no skull, so they can\u2019t use simple identification methods like dental records.\u00a0 They\u2019re going on the evidence, instead, of a class ring from an exclusive Detroit area private school found with the bones.\u00a0 Julie\u2019s family still has a cottage on the island, and Louis\u2019s trail leads him there.<\/p>\n

There are some missteps, some misunderstandings and some just plain politics as Louis, Flowers, and a state investigator with uncomfortable ties to Louis\u2019 girlfriend, Joe, try and work together.\u00a0 The different investigation techniques of the three men sometimes slow progress rather than advance it, but slowly they begin to lurch toward a solution.<\/p>\n

As Louis continues to be drawn into the case, he also starts to realize he has more ties to Michigan than he had imagined.\u00a0 It\u2019s a kind of stopping point for him where he\u2019s figuring out where his life might be going, and in fact all three men are at different crossroads in their lives.\u00a0 As it turns out, the missing and presumed dead Julie Chapman was also at some kind of life crossroad, and it\u2019s that mystery that the men focus on as they unravel her family\u2019s secrets.\u00a0 The ultimate solution to the mystery is a twisty and riveting one, worth any ending ever delivered by Jeffrey Deaver or Harlan Coben.\u00a0 By the end of the novel I couldn\u2019t stop reading, which is maybe the best compliment you can give any book, paperback or no.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

P.J. Parrish \u2013 or the sisters who write as P.J. Parrish \u2013 are paperback writers in the very best sense of the word.\u00a0 They deliver a good story, well told, with reliable characters and settings, asking only that their readers enjoy the journey they deliver. Almost always, they fulfill this promise.\u00a0 With their new novel, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[15,7],"class_list":["post-1020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-michigan","tag-p-i"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1020"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1023,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1020\/revisions\/1023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}