Book Review: Heart of the World

Reviewed By: Catherine Thompson - RAM

[5 stars]

Heart of the World Amazon US PB Amazon US HC Amazon UK HC Amazon Canada PB Amazon Canada HC
Linda Barnes
Class/Genre: Mystery Private Investigator
Series: Carlotta Carlyle # 11
St. Martin’s Minotaur, $33.95 hardcover, 323 pages

Private investigator Carlotta Carlyle finds her world turned upside-down the night she gets the phone call. Her “little sister” Paolina, the girl she was paired with by a local mentoring programme years ago, is missing. The news sends Carlotta out to comb the streets of Boston.

But there’s no sign of Paolina, and Carlotta begins to suspect that there’s more here than just a runaway teenager. Besides that, she finds a gold trinket, clearly of foreign design, in Paolina’s locker at school. From this, Carlotta deduces that Paolina’s father, the Colombian drug lord Carlos Roldan Gonzales, has something to do with the girl’s disappearance. Whether he enticed Paolina to join him in Bogotá or whether there is some more sinister force at work, Carlotta isn’t sure, but her uncertainty isn’t enough to keep her from flying to Colombia to continue the search.

Heart of the World is Barnes’s eleventh Carlotta Carlyle mystery, and it’s a slam-bang roller coaster ride from beginning to end. Not only is the action almost non-stop, Barnes manages to dig deeply into her character’s psyche and uncover some scars that have never healed.

I have a fondness for tough-talking female detectives who nonetheless are recognizable as women underneath the hard shell they wear to protect them while they work. Carlotta Carlyle is one of these. While she never lets the “softer” side of herself interfere with her work, that part of her still informs it, driving her to find the missing persons she specializes in recovering.

Barnes is definitely at the top of her game here. Heart of the World may be her best novel yet, and I can’t wait to see how she tops it.

Catherine Thompson - RAM

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Catherine Thompson - RAM

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