Rocketgirl's Full Review: Elizabeth Lowell - Always Time to Die
Elizabeth Lowell is the author of a number of suspense novels. Or would you call them romantic suspense novels? I was not familiar with this author when I picked up this book. The story sounded interesting. I saw that she had written a number of other books, so if I liked this one, I had plenty more to choose from from this author. And the titles of the other books sounded like suspense novels. There were no clues that this was romantic suspense. But that's what this is. I don't know if this is the type of book Lowell has always written, or if she is a gradual convert to them like Nora Roberts and Sandra Brown. But if you can't tolerate your suspense novels interrupted by men and women making goo-goo eyes at each other, don't read this book.
That being said, it still had an interesting, if slightly convoluted story line. Carly May has been hired by Winifred Simmons to research the history of her family. Winifred is the aunt of the current governor of New Mexico. The governor's father was a former senator, who recently died. The senator was known as a womanizer who fathered many children out of wedlock.
Winifred wants Carly May to research one side of the family to write a family history. But it soon becomes apparent that not everyone is enamored with the idea. Someone leaves a dead rat in her room. Someone makes threatening phone calls. They break into her car with red paint. And someone throws a brick through her window.
Through it all is Dan Duran, a newspaperman with a mysterious past, who helps her search through newspaper archives for historical data on the family. It doesn't take them long to realize they are dependent on each other for more than just professional reasons. Soon they have a mutual need to keep the other from being killed. Because they want a future together after they figure out who would kill to cover up a secret from the past.
The story is fast-paced. Events start happening right away. The paperback version is about 450 pages, with 66 chapters, so chapters are short. Short chapters, many scene changes, lots of dialogue and lots of white space make for quicker and easier reading. Though this is not what would be termed an action suspense novel, there is still plenty of suspense because in each scene Dan and Carly learn something new that adds or solves a piece of the puzzle.
Having the story set in New Mexico is not your typical novel setting. And even if something is set there it is generally Santa Fe or Albuquerque. But this is set in Taos, a much smaller city. Indian and Mexican presence is prevalent. And so are the drug runners. Is that the secret that someone wants to cover up? Campaign financing has been supported by laundered drug money? The setting brings other possibilities to the plot that another location would not have. Also, the story is set in the winter time and there is snow on the ground, something else not generally associated with New Mexico, though it does snow there. The snow brings an added feature to tracking someone who shot at Dan.
Some of the plot involves analysis of DNA. The explanation of this is done in simple enough terms for the layman to understand. However, the relationship of some of the characters was not really ever explained clearly enough to help the reader explain why any of the DNA stuff is significant. So while reading, I was left wondering what was going on. Fortunately the writer does a good job in the epilogue tying up everything or I'm sure I would not quite have understood what the big secret was.
As expected in a romantic suspense novel, you're going to have a "happy ever after" ending, so that part was completely predictable. These type of books just aren't going to end any other way. So from that perspective, the ending was predictable. And the bits of romance that are thrown into the plot come at the weirdest times, like right in the middle of doing computer research at the newspaper office. Maybe people who have newly discovered each other really do constantly fantasize about the others' body when they look at each other, but it would be in their thoughts. Thoughts cannot be witnessed, so these passages just seemed totally out of place. I found myself skipping them as irrelevant. What was also a bit ridiculous is that "tough guy" Dan gives in to her almost right away, so that any sexual tension that could have been used as part of the plot, was completely erased.
Overall, though, the story line was intriguing enough to keep reading. I wanted to find out what the secret was that someone didn't want Carly May to reveal in her research. I wanted to see if it was something that really mattered, or if it was something that was just politically inconvenient. It was pretty predictable who the culprit was, but I wanted to see why he was so threatened. I have to say the secret was not what I expected, so the author did a good job hiding what might have been obvious otherwise.
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.