Book Review: Home from Home

Reviewed By: Luke Croll - RAM

Home from Home     Amazon UK PB Amazon UK HC
Carol Smith
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Woman Main Character   Amateur Sleuth
2003, Time Warner, 298 pages

New York novelist Anna Kovac, oppressed by 9-11 decides to do a house-swap and moves to Tuscany for the summer. Tuscany seems like paradise, until things start to drastically wrong ? from the use of her credit card to the death of one of her friends. When she returns to New York, the locks on her house have been changed. Who is the person with whom she has swapped her house, and why has he stolen her identity?

'Home From Home' is another of those pleasant summer reads, aimed specifically at the female portion of the market. Smith skirts around any graphic description of violence and indeed, almost the first half of the novel is spent describing the wonderful Tuscan countryside and the villa in which Kovac and her friends find themselves. She tells the reader about village life and gives as much background as possible to her characters, all the while avoiding anything to do with the plot itself, apart from building an idyllic location.

Readers may also find the denouement somewhat disappointing. Smith builds up to the unmasking of the criminal, but in the end, there is no hard and fast resolution to bring closure to the novel, with Smith choosing to return the characters to Italy and their paradisiacal life.

Beautifully described, 'Home From Home' is a cozy novel that will make the reader long for a Tuscan villa of their own. However, if we liken the story to a sandwich and the mystery is the meat, then it is very much a limp, thin slice of ham, and certainly not one of the amazing, thick, Italian varieties to be found in a trattoria!

Luke Croll - RAM

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

Luke Croll - Conference interpreter and translator
http://lukecroll.translatorscafe.com