|  |
| Customer Reviews: | | Average Customer Review: ( 4 customer reviews )
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Great mystery Dec 30, 2011
By DebraDavisHinkle
This is one of the best mysteries I've ever read. You will never figure out the ending and will be taken on a wonderful and twisted journey.
Untangling the Webs Dec 27, 2011
By Leonard Carpenter
Susan Tuttle's Tangled Webs is a tightly knit romantic mystery thriller that rewards a full reading. When you open this book, odds are that you will be caught up in its toils and swept rapidly the whole way to the turbulent finish.
Don't be frightened off by the book's 487 pages. The type is easy-eye and the prose is easy reading, action-packed and smooth-flowing. Tuttle's writing is strong, with occasional descriptive delights such as "The secretary's silken voice undulated along the phone line." The language can be hard as nails, but art plays a key role in both the storytelling and the story itself.
The tale revolves around Lia Willett, a young woman haunted by depraved parents, a mysterious disease, and a troubled, partly-forgotten past that causes her to doubt her own sanity. When her mother's death brings her back to her childhood home, the past catches up with her in a steadily escalating crisis of threats, cruelty and violence.
The all-too-memorable setting is the merciless small town of Mercerville (not necessarily murder-ville, at least not all the time). The residents include some characters warped by past events, some bestial and some diabolical, but all of whom are worthy of suspicion. The town doctor, an old flame of Lia... is he there to cure or torment his former love? And the handsome police detective... will he end up exonerating or imprisoning her?
The tangled webs result from the intersection of three mysteries. First there are the heinous but inadequately punished crimes of Lia's father, Dabney Willett, a serial killer. His original sins drive the story and raise the central question: is Lia a murderer like him? Then there is the suspicious drowning of Lia's high school rival, the rich and privileged Cerise Forester, of whose murder she is accused. And finally the question: who is behind the vendetta that is unleashed against Lia from the day she sets foot in her sinister, dilapidated family home, which proves to be a black museum of criminal memories and dark secrets.
The protagonist is a complex character. Burdened with a proud, combative attitude and a paranoia that sometimes proves all too justified, she still hopes to withstand her tormentors by being her best and finding the best in those she meets. But can a past so tangled ever be overcome? In a world ensnared by ancient wrongs and spites, is there room for true friendship, much less love?
It is to the author's credit, and to the reader's benefit, that the story is told in the present-day, principally from the heroine's point of view and not overburdened with flashbacks. The webs untangle, steadily and relentlessly, but who will be left dangling from their twisted strands? In Tangled Webs, Susan Tuttle has provided us with a gripping mystery quest for survival, true love, and personal vindication.
For a writer, too, there is much to learn here, and I hope I've emulated Tuttle in my own latest thiller Lusitania Lost.
Monica Slovenz - author of "Billy's Differences" Aug 31, 2005
By Monica L. Slovenz
WOW!!! I haven't enjoyed a book this much since... I don't remember when. Tuttle's writing style is so engaging that you won't be able to put the book down. Trying to identify with Lia's plight is made all that much easier by Tuttle's excellent descriptions of each character, and situation. Six stars!!!
 Fast Paced and Vivid Jun 27, 2005
By Cynthia J. Clay
"author of Vector Theory and the Plot Structures of Literature and Drama"
Tuttle's writing is so vivid, you feel you have lived all your life yourself in this small town where our heroine, Lia lives, and know the people Lia knows. There are great character studies; perhaps my favorite begins: "Of medium height and broad proportions, with massive muscles reduced by encrouching age to flab, his small beady eyes squatted below an overhanging brow, bisected by a bulbous nose generously sprinkled with reddened veins." But what did I like best about this story? That is also a ghost story! I want to see the tv special movie!
|
| | |
|
|
