The Other Daughter by Lisa Gardner

The Other Daughter by Lisa Gardner

My review

Rating: 3 of 5 stars
Russell Lee Holmes murdered 6 young children, and the state of Texas is executing him for his crimes. One Of the children Holmes has confessed to murdering is Meagan Stokes, the daughter of a Texas physician and his wife. A reporter covering the story of Holmes' execution knows that Holmes himself has a child, but no one knows the location of this child or the child's mother. When Holmes is executed, that secret dies with him... or so everyone believes. The night Holmes dies, a 9 year old girl shows up in the hospital where Meagan's father works. She has no memory of who she is or where she came from. Eventually Stokes and his wife adopt this girl and name her Melanie Stokes. She fills the gaping void left by the murder of her "sister" Meagan.


So begins the story of the Stokes family. Years pass, the family leaves Texas, and the Stokes' household moves on with their lives. And then a series of strange events begin to happen starting with the arrival in town of the reporter who originally covered Russell Lee Holmes and his crimes. The implication is that Melanie Stokes is the child of Russell Lee Holmes. Whether or not that's true, it becomes clear that there's circumstances surrounding Melanie's first 9 years and subsequent adoption that someone wants to reveal. This puts the whole Stokes family in jeopardy of falling apart.


There are enough twists and turns in this story to keep the reader guessing right up until the end. I thought some of those events were a bit contrived, but there's no denying that this was a page turner that kept me trying to figure out who was doing what to whom throughout.








View all my reviews.

The Vulture Fund by Stephen Frey

The Vulture Fund by Stephen W. Frey

My review

Rating: 2 of 5 stars

I read this Stephen Frey book because I thought it would be interesting to see how a plot could be developed using investment banking as the backdrop for a mystery/thriller. Unfortunately, the story was not even close to plausible, and that I found disappointing. However, this is not to say I didn't like the book at all. Frey has a wide variety of characters most of whom play against each other, and at the very center of this is the mystery concerning who is really pulling all the strings for a nefarious scheme to raise a huge amount of money over a short time period. This gave me some incentive to keep on reading. Given the current very real global economic crisis, The Vulture Fund could have been relevant to today's financial headlines. Instead, because of its unlikely story development, the book fell short of my expectations.

If Frey were relying on his own experience in investment banking, he has a very low opinion of women working within this industry. His opinion of men isn't much higher. In short, men are pigs, and women are pig farmers. That doesn't make anyone very likable. None of the characters were ever developed enough to make the reader care what happened to them.

Perhaps someone who really really likes reading mystery thrillers would enjoy this book, but I'll pass on anything more by Stephen Frey.

View all my reviews.