Book Review: Like a Charm : A Novel in Voices

Reviewed By: Woodstock - RAM

Like a Charm : A Novel in Voices     Amazon US PB Amazon US HC Amazon Canada PB Amazon Canada HC
Karin Slaughter , Laura Lippman , Peter Robinson , Mark Billingham , Jerrilyn Farmer , Fidelis Morgan , Lee Child , Denise Mina , John Connolly , Jane Haddam
Class/Genre:   Mystery   [Short Stories]

Author Karin Slaughter has assembled a group of writers of suspense fiction currently on the scene both in the UK and in the USA. The result is a so-called "Round Robin" novel on a single theme, with each writer contributing a chapter.

Slaughter gets things rolling with a tale from the American frontier in the years of the European expansion into territories called home by Indian tribes. A trapper living off the land is seduced by an Indian woman who wears a unique bracelet - with a series of small gold charms. >From that beginning chapter, we follow the bracelet through early years in the USA, and then across the Atlantic to the continuing episodes set in Britain, and back again to the US for the concluding chapters.

Fourteen authors with varying voices and styles chip in, each one providing a clue to the reader on how the bracelet was found and came to figure in the succeeding stories. Chapters by Fidelis Morgan, Lee Child, and Peter Robinson worked especially well.

Woodstock - RAM

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