Words leave imprints in your mind like footprints in the sand...
1960s: Imagine and experience what life in 1960s America was like. Get to meet the Kennedy’s as the world only narrowly missed the horror of the Cuban Missile crisis as well as hunting down a serial killer then this is the read to get your teeth into.
Stella Arnold found out that her father was a cold-blooded, psychotic extortionist, racketeer and killer when she was 16. Since then she’s tried to come to terms with it to study psychology and the criminal mind, and to further her education in America.
She ends up in Boston and because of her English accent seems to be quite the hit! She becomes popular on the social scene and in soon invited to the Kennedy’s home one hot summer’s night.
A little further south, in the Florida Keys, there is a killer on the loose. Due to Her knowledge, Stella is brought on board to help catch the killer but there is a lot at stake here, and Stella knows it.
There is such a fantastic sense of place with this book, that it would be perfect for a booktrail but equally evocative from the comfort of your armchair
Boston
“See that bridge up ahead? That takes us over the Connecticut river. It used to be called the Great River – flows all the way down from Quebec up north and if you jumped on a raft here, you’d eventually be spat out into Long Island Sound. One way to get to see New York , huh?”
Stella Arnold is off to America to study psychology at a prestigious university and thanks to her host family meets the Kennedy brothers at a party in Martha’s Vineyard –
“The Kennedys have their family compound at Hyannis Port on Cape Cod, just across Nantucket Sound from the vineyard”
A nice touch – real people and important historical characters set against an iconic world background really set the scene up for me – nice to see the light hearted scenes between the brothers –
As they got closer, Stella could hear the President and his brother quarreling over how much longer the T-bones needed on the giant griddle.
Recruited by the brothers to assist the FBI with an investigation Stella finds that her expertise would come in handy – a brutal maniac is killing girls up and down the Florida keys.
“Key Biscayne hadn’t exactly turned out to be the happy hunting ground of his hungry imagination”
As for the trail that the killer takes us on – there can be evil in paradise – against the lush surroundings and the retro locales, there is darkness and grim reality for the officers in chase. In the alternating chapters that we hear him speak and carry out his crimes, the chill can be felt through the heady sweaty Florida sun –
“He’d been pulled over at a lonely spot. The waters of the Atlantic and the Gulf hustled in on both side of the narrow two-lane highway. there was no dry land here for buildings of any kind here in these shallow swamps on the edge of the Everglades, studded with bleached, drowned pines. The dead trees cast thin, gloomy shadows over the two men as the sun settled lower, getting ready for its big finale”
Author/Guide: Richard Madeley Destination: Boston, Florida Keys (Key West), Martha’s Vineyard Departure Time: 1960s
Twitter: @richardm56 Web: blog.whsmith.co.uk/richard-judy
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