Summer of Storms Book

The still-unsolved murder of her 3-year-old sister Julie has haunted Anna Jameson's dreams since childhood. Tantalizing bits and pieces of that hurricane-tossed night tease her memory, but she's put it behind her and tried to move on with her life--unlike her parents, who left New York after the tragedy and still don't venture very far from their Charleston home. Now Anna has an opportunity to make her mark as a photographer in New York, and despite her mother's worry and warning, she takes it. Much of the first half of this somewhat slow-moving suspense story covers Anna's efforts to make a place for herself, professionally and personally. But then another perspective intrudes: that of a group of forensic psychologists, known collectively as the Arcanum, who study "cold" cases and try to close them, often years after the fact. The "Sleeping Beauty Murder," as the killing of little Julie Jameson is known, suddenly takes on new urgency when an anonymous someone with inside knowledge of those past events gets the experts involved again. Despite the obvious parallels to the Jon Benet Ramsey case (including the suspicion that a family member killed the little girl), it's never made clear why a 30-year-old murder should still capture so much attention. The characterizations of the Arcanum members are so thin and one-dimensional that we don't care about them, except to note that author Judith Kelman seems to have a particular dislike of one of the experts she sketches, a media-hungry, spotlight-grabbing, and thoroughly unpleasant psychologist who's almost as awful as Anna's new boss, a tyrannical newspaper publisher. Kelman's written more than a dozen solid thrillers (Fly Away Home,, After the Fall, etc.), but this one seems slight and full of extraneous characters, intentionally misleading clues and McGuffins, and unfulfilled expectations. --Jane AdamsRead More