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Mary Willis Walker ListingsIf you cannot find what you want on this page, then please use our search feature to search all our listings. Click on Title to view full description
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Mary Willis Walker All the Dead Lie Down
Bantam 0553578227 / 9780553578225 MASS MARKET PAPERBACK Good
0553578227 Editorial Reviews n nAmazon.com Review nQuotations from Mother Goose and Macbeth (as well as the Emily Dickinson snippet of the title) provide the chapter headings in this engaging novel of suspense. The apparent peculiarity of such juxtaposition brings home the brutality of those childhood rhymes and the dangers of obsession and revenge. Both serve Mary Willis Walker's purpose well in setting up this tightly constructed mystery in which investigative journalist Molly Cates's own obsession with her father's untimely death from 30 years before gets mixed up in a current and far more dangerous scheme to release chemical gases into the Senate chamber of the Texas Capitol. The two plots, the first a traditional mystery, the second more a tale of suspense, are unconnected except for Cates's involvement; she is obviously central to one and initially only tangential to the other. Such a device would have proved unwieldy in less skillful hands, but in Walker's case the disparate strands are brought together beautifully, and Cates has a suitable sense of her own fallibility and the difficulty of harboring hate for the better part of a generation. n nWalker's previous three novels have won six mystery-writers awards among them. All the Dead Lie Down is solid enough to continue the tradition set by the others. Within it there is much to relish: sensitive consideration of homelessness, thought-provoking questions about gun control, and a wry appreciation for the charm and arrogance of the Lone Star State and its citizens ("Texans do not scrimp on stars."). Indeed, Walker's sense of place--from Lubbock's dust and dry desolation to Austin's trendiness and political maneuvering--is sure and confident. There are moments when the worst of the perpetrators of the chemical weapons scare is portrayed simplistically, but this is more than made up for by the complexity of the other characters: the vagrants who discover the danger as well as the ghosts, both past and present, who haunt Molly in her investigations of her father's past. An excellent read, for even the most jaded of mystery lovers. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. n nFrom Publishers Weekly nWhile napping under the deck of an Austin, Tex., restaurant, a homeless woman called Cow Lady is awakened by talk overhead of a lethal gas soon to be released in the Texas State Capitol building. From there, Walker switches to the Capitol building, where Molly Cates, an investigative reporter last seen in Under the Beetle's Cellar (1995), is working on a story about the upcoming vote on a handgun bill. Cates runs into the man who had been sheriff when her father died 25 years earlier. Although her father's death by gunshot was judged suicide, Cates has never given up her belief that he was murdered and that the sheriff suppressed evidence of the crime. She's determined to resume her intensive personal investigation, despite the advice of her lover (who is also her former husband) and old family friends, including a state senator and his wife. Cates is out of town when a homeless woman?not Cow Lady but wearing Cow Lady's black and white coat?is murdered. From its compelling beginning to the extended conclusion, which moves from the depths of a garbage dump to the Capitol, Walker conjures a memorable, disparate cast. Only a few seams show as she connects the political conspiracy, the homeless community and the unexpected?and entirely satisfying?explanation for the death of Cates's father. nCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Price:
2.00 EUR
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Mary Willis Walker Under the Beetle's Cellar
Harper Collins 0006498280 / 9780006498285 PAPERBACK Good
0006498280 Synopsis nA chilling, only-too-topical thriller from the award-winning author of THE RED SCREAM and ALL THE DEAD LIE DOWN. Eleven Texan schoolchildren and their bus driver are captured by a fundamentalist cult, taken to a fortified compound and buried underground, kept alive but only just. Negotiations lead nowhere. Enter Molly Cates, tenacious crime writer with the inside track on the cult leader. But time is running out...Claustrophobic terror alternates with frenzied investigations as the sect's deadline approaches. Post-Waco, post-Oklahoma, the nature of cults is explored to its grim, unrelenting limits in this terrifically paced novel of suspense.
Price:
4.84 EUR
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