A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

Valley of Ashes is the fourth title in Cornelia Read's Madeline Dare series.  I've reviewed the three previous titles here on the blog.  Click here and here and here to see them.  As its predecessors did before, this latest installment picks up both later in the timeline (about a year and a half after the last book) and in a different locale than each of the others because for whatever reason, Madeline and her husband, Dean, are nomads who move every couple years.  Dean is often absent from much of the action in the story due to various business travels and as a result has remained a fairly one dimensional character.  In this installment we find out why he's away so much.  And it's because he's a verbal abuse spewing asshole of a husband who doesn't care one whit to lift a finger to help his exhausted spouse with the housework or childcare instead choosing to vaunt off on hours long bike rides on the weekends that he is home and not travelling in some...

Invisible Boy is Cornelia Read's third and most recent installment in the Madeline Dare series.  Thus far each book in the series takes place about a year after its predecessor in a different setting.  This makes me wonder where we'll find Madeline and her husband living in the next book especially considering the life altering development in their personal lives that was revealed in the closing pages of the book.  Might we next find them in Ohio living near Madeline's friend Ellis who last made an appearance in the debut Dare novel?  We'll have to wait until next year to find out because if the author follows her previous pattern of releasing a new novel every two years, the next one won't drop until sometime in 2012. By now we all know how trouble follows Madeline, and it shows up like clockwork on a yearly basis despite Madeline putting geographical distance between herself and the site of her previous encounters with life endangering trouble with a capital T....

The Crazy School is the second installment in Cornelia Read's Madeline Dare series.   The Crazy School , both as a book and as a place, is populated by characters who are all different kinds of crazy for all different kinds of reasons.   A Field of Darkness ( Crazy 's predecessor)  started off with a killer first line/paragraph that set the bar and tone for the rest of that novel.   The Crazy School doesn't have that distinction.  However, the book very quickly hooks the reader--once the story gets going, it's very hard to put down, and the chapters fly by. It's the year after the events of A Field of Darkness .  While these events are referenced obliquely once or twice, it would be very easy for someone to jump into the series starting with this book and then catch up with the first one.  Me, I like to read a series in order.  Okay, let's just be honest: I HAVE to read a series in order, so I started with the first one and continued...

A Field of Darkness is the first in a new series.  Read has released two more installments after this one (and the reviews for those will be forthcoming).  There is a marked difference in the feel and tone between Field and its successors.  It makes me wonder if maybe the first one was first intended as a stand alone novel.  Nevertheless this (and its successors) is a gripping mystery story related by a sharp tongued, witty narrator.  It's a page turner, very hard to put down and is populated with elements that always seem to intrigue me: family history, fairy tales and murder. It's 1988, and Madeline Dare is unhappily ensconced in Syracuse, New York, her husband's hometown.  Though she writes for a local, free, weekly newspaper, she is the opposite of the intrepid, investigative reporter chomping at the bit for her big break.  Madeline is quite happy writing the fluff lifestyle and home pieces for the newspaper.  Then a chilling, un...