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Indlæser... De usynlige (2011)af Stef Penney
Indlæser...
Bliv medlem af LibraryThing for at finde ud af, om du vil kunne lide denne bog. Der er ingen diskussionstråde på Snak om denne bog. First read in 2012. Reread in 2021 and it holds up. ( ) Who better to solve a Gypsy mystery than a Gypsy detective? And so years after Rose Janko apparently walks away from her husband and newborn son, her father hires private detective Ray Lovell to find her in Stef Penney's novel “The Invisible Ones.” The father has done some detective work of his own and found that Lowell has Gypsy blood himself. So perhaps he can be trusted and, just as important, be trusted by the family he must probe for information about Rose's disappearance. That isn't easy, for Ivo Janko, her husband, and the rest of the family seem uninterested in finding her and aren't even sure why she left. Ivo says Rose just couldn't handle motherhood, especially because her son, Christo, has a crippling disease that affects most of the males in the family. Lovell is told Ivo had the disease as a boy but was cured after a trip to Lourdes. A similar trip for Christo brings no change in his condition. The detective begins to suspect Rose may have been murdered, especially when bones, possibly those of a young woman, are found buried nearby. When she is discovered alive and well, the mystery seems to be over. Instead it has only deepened, especially after Lovell is poisoned and nearly killed and Ivo himself disappears. The novel benefits from having two narrators. Lovell does the honors for a bit more than half of the book, but the rest of the story is told by JJ, an observant Gypsy boy who becomes the family's conscience, as well as the reader's best guide to the lives of these people who live in trailers and rarely put down roots. If not as beautifully written as Penney's first novel, “The Tenderness of Wolves,” her second book nevertheless entertains from first to last. It may feature a detective, but to call it a mystery would be to shortchange it. I was so looking forward to this book, the second of Stef Penny's. But, alas it was no where near the quality or caliber of The Tenderness of Wolves. Don't get me wrong, it was still good. I definitely kept picking it up wanting to know what happened next. And the whole idea of modern day gypsies was very intriguing. It just was not unforgettable. The characters were very blah and I was not invested in their survival. I'm hoping her next one will be more noteworthy.
Another stunner from Penney; highly recommended. The Invisible Ones is interesting on the methods and mistakes of a private investigator. "Tangible, rational, explicable: that's how you have to think … The danger is that you get stuck in one hypothesis." But the conventions of detective fiction are laid upon a lengthy non-genre novel without the pace or plotting to support them, and the tension vital to such a tale is too often absent. Like The Tenderness of Wolves, it focuses on a disappearance, a quest and an outsider community, but the spine-tingle of its predecessor is missing until the end, when a bold twist is very skilfully pulled off.
Hovering between paralysis and delirium in a hospital bed, half-Romany private investigator Ray Lovell evaluates a case involving the missing wife of a charismatic traveling Gypsy whose hostile family is hiding a tragic secret. No library descriptions found. |
LibraryThing Early Reviewers AlumStef Penney's book The Invisibles Ones was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Current DiscussionsIngenPopulære omslag
Google Books — Indlæser... GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.92Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 2000-LC-klassificeringVurderingGennemsnit:
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