Book Review: The Root of All Evil

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

The Root of All Evil     Amazon US PB Amazon Canada PB
Joylynn M. Jossel
Class/Genre:   Fiction
St. Martin's, Jun 2004, $12.95, 326 pp.

In her thirties in Toledo, Ohio, Klarke Taylor has not recovered from her former husband Harris leaving her for his cousin Tionne three years ago. He left her to raise their two preadolescent children almost alone. Depressed, financially, she is in worse shape as Harris had kept them in a comfortable lifestyle for the thirteen years they were married. Her parents are dead so she cannot turn to them, her bills are piling up as she is behind with all of them and the collectors harass her at home and at her job at Kemble and Steiner Printing.

Desperate, Klarke and her friends Breezy and Jeva devise a scheme to trap a wealthy male. Through her printing firm’s publishing customers, the trio targets bestselling author Reo Laroque, a bachelor with women desiring him, but seeks a virtuous woman although he has one female, Meka, in his life. He enjoys exchanging email with KAT (Klarke) and thinks she is the one when they meet. The plan succeeds except that at every turn the trio gets deeper down a path that started unethical, but turned deadly.

This engaging contemporary tale focuses on lust and love battling for supremacy against gold fever as the desperate threesome pulls a swindle to obtain money from a nice mark. The story line is character driven as readers see the hopelessness that pushes Klarke from her normally principled behavior into an anxious con artist and its impact on her two young children. The support cast plays major roles as Joylynn M. Jossel makes the case that the ROOF OF ALL EVIL is not money, but people’s reckless deeds to obtain loot at high personal costs.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner