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Read Kiss Of The Bees (2001)

Kiss of the Bees (2001)

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Rating
3.72 of 5 Votes: 1
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ISBN
0380805995 (ISBN13: 9780380805990)
Language
English
Publisher
avon books

Kiss Of The Bees (2001) - Plot & Excerpts

#2 in the Diana Ladd & Brandon Walker series. The action takes place 20 years after that of Night of the Hunter(1991). Psychopath Andrew Carlisle has been imprisoned after his attack on Diana Ladd. As a cellmate he has managed to get Mitch Johnson, a murderer captured by then Sheriff Brandon Walker. Diana has married Brandon and they have adopted a Papago Indian toddler, Lani. Before Carlisle dies in prison, Carlisle mentors Johnson, who will eventually be released, in waging a war of terror on the Walker family culminating in the abduction of Lani, now 16 years old, with the goal of torturing and murdering her.There are too many twists to this tale including the influence Johnson has over Walker's estranged son - who he also met in prison. Beginning chapters with pieces of animist Papago myths and the related mysticism is also not my cup of tea. Readable but overly complex and I look forward to returning to Jance's J.P. Beaumont and Joanna Brady series.Diana Ladd & Brandon Walker series - Diana Ladd Walker survived a terrifying rape and murder attempt a two decades earlier. Throwing a pan of hot grease into the face of Andrew Carlisle saved Diana's life and blinded Carlisle, who was eventually tried and sentenced to life in prison. The event has haunted Diana, who finally achieved a sense of catharsis after turning the horrifying story into a Pulitzer-winning book. And now that Carlisle has died in prison of AIDS, Diana's catharsis is complete. But even dead, the diabolical Carlisle isn't done with Diana. He's trained a disciple, Mitch Johnson, to carry on his legacy of hate and revenge. And that legacy includes a plan to destroy the woman who blinded Carlisle and robbed him of his freedom. Mitch is to kidnap Diana's adopted Native American daughter, torture her, and eventually kill her, thus inflicting on Diana a loss of the same magnitude that she inflicted on Carlisle. But Diana's daughter, as defiant as her mother, makes use of Native American spiritual powers to fight for her survival.

This story takes place about twenty years after the last book. Andrew Carlisle may have been in prison since Diana Ladd threw bacon grease into his face, but he has managed to find an accomplice to bring retribution on the Diana, and her husband Brandon Walker. Their daughter Lani turns up missing, as they try to piece the clues together.This book, like the previous one, is not full of action. The story unfolds slowly, taking it's time to get where it is going. If you enjoyed the first book, you will like this one. It answers some questions that were left unanswered, and provides some insight into what happened twenty years earlier.

What do You think about Kiss Of The Bees (2001)?

Kiss of the Bees is the second in J.A. Jance's Walker-Ladd family series. Because the book is so plot driven, this is a spoiler-free review so as not to spoil the book for anyone. It's therefore brief.This story jumps ahead 20 years from the first book, Hour of the Hunter. The first part of the book is used to catch the reader up on the happenings of the family but then the story from the first book continues, against expectations, into this one. Like the first installment, this book is slow to start then becomes a page-turned about mid-way.Jance continues to introduce each chapter with a bit of Papago Indian folklore. This helps cement a sense of place within the desert of Southern Arizona amongst the Tohono O'Odham people. I'm a fan of Jance's writing but I'm becoming particularly fond of this series. The plots in her other works are always interesting and have plenty of twists, but the characters are a bit shallow. In this series, she's taking the time to thoroughly develop her characters. Quite a bit of this story is internal dialogue and you get to experience the growth of characters and better understand their viewpoint as a Native Americans. There are quite a few interesting heroes being developed for future works in this series and I'm looking forward to diving into the next book, Day of the Dead.
—Paul

I had a hard time deciding between one and two stars; I decided on two for the thread of the book that I enjoyed. This book was a big disappointment for me, a big J.A. Jance fan. Perhaps it would have made more sense if I'd read the first book of this series first, but reading books out of sequence doesn't usually hinder my enjoyment of a novel. I finally learned to just skip the gobbeldy-gook in italics, and the most of the rest of the novel made sense and even became pretty interesting. The constant switching between time frames and settings without cluing in the reader was very disconcerting. If I'd tried reading this on my Kindle, I would have given up -- I was constantly having to flip back to previous pages to find out who was speaking or when the time jumped back or forward (or in or out or beside or inside or outside - or...). That is hard to do on an electronic reader. Overall, the major plotline of Kiss of the Bees was a good one, but it just took too much work and effort to ferret it out of all the Indian lore and sideplots.
—Joan

This was my first Jance book and it was okay. I'm sure I'll check out some of her other stuff in time, but I'm not racing to get to another one. The beginning of this book dragged on. There were so many characters I had a hard time keeping them straight. On top of that, all the Indian characters had 2 or 3 names that she would interchange throughout the book, which was very confusing at times. By the end I had them all straight, but it took a while. I found all the use of Indian words distracting, and at the beginning of every chapter there is italic writing about Indians that completely confused me. I would've liked this book a lot better if it stuck to more English. The last couple hundred pages were pretty good, and they went by quick. If I could give 3.5 I probably would.
—Brett Tompkins

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