Ripper Author: Isabel Allende | Language: English | ISBN:
B00DB3D78A | Format: EPUB
Ripper Description
Isabel Allende—the New York Times bestselling author whose books, including Maya’s Notebook, Island Beneath the Sea, and Zorro, have sold more than 57 million copies around the world—demonstrates her remarkable literary versatility with Ripper, an atmospheric, fast-paced mystery involving a brilliant teenage sleuth who must unmask a serial killer in San Francisco.
The Jackson women, Indiana and Amanda, have always had each other. Yet, while their bond is strong, mother and daughter are as different as night and day. Indiana, a beautiful holistic healer, is a free-spirited bohemian. Long divorced from Amanda’s father, she’s reluctant to settle down with either of the men who want her—Alan, the wealthy scion of one of San Francisco’s elite families, and Ryan, an enigmatic, scarred former Navy SEAL.
While her mom looks for the good in people, Amanda is fascinated by the dark side of human nature, like her father, the SFPD’s Deputy Chief of Homicide. Brilliant and introverted, the MIT-bound high school senior is a natural-born sleuth addicted to crime novels and Ripper, the online mystery game she plays with her beloved grandfather and friends around the world.
When a string of strange murders occurs across the city, Amanda plunges into her own investigation, discovering, before the police do, that the deaths may be connected. But the case becomes all too personal when Indiana suddenly vanishes. Could her mother’s disappearance be linked to the serial killer? Now, with her mother’s life on the line, the young detective must solve the most complex mystery she’s ever faced before it’s too late.
- File Size: 638 KB
- Print Length: 501 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0062291408
- Publisher: Harper (January 28, 2014)
- Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00DB3D78A
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,392 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #3
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Crime Fiction > Serial Killers - #16
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Crime Fiction > Murder
- #3
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Crime Fiction > Serial Killers - #16
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Crime Fiction > Murder
Over the past few years, Isabel Allende has been trying to stretch her literary abilities by writing in genres outside of those that made her famous. She's dabbled in fantasy (Zorro), historical fiction (Ines of My Soul, Island Beneath The Sea), children's literature (City of Beasts), and even Young Adult (Maya's Notebook). It's admirable that Allende is tackling these styles at a point in her career when many authors at similar junctures would be coasting on their reputations. But, attempting doesn't guarantee succeeding. As is the case with several of her other forays into new territory, Allende proves with Ripper that the skill set which makes one a good novelist doesn't always work when applied to other genres.
Ripper is theoretically the story of a girl and her cohorts who, in the course of playing the game "Ripper", attempt to solve real murders: murders that eventually impact her immediate family. However, Allende establishes early in the book that she's not overly interested in the mystery (in fact, she has one of her characters disparage mysteries by commenting on how easy it is to write one). Instead, Allende is more interested in subjects that her long time readers will recognize: the power of family, the strength of women, the loutish nature of most men, and the role of the slightly supernatural in our lives. When Allende is playing in her usual sandbox of themes, Ripper holds together very well. She meticulously develops her characters, builds plausible scenes with those characters to highlight the themes, and even provides them with realistic dialogue (long a weakness of Allende's). But, so much energy is poured into the character study that the mystery becomes even more of an afterthought than Allende establishes early in the book.
This is the book. THE BOOK. The one about which I finally stand up and say NO MORE. I have been a fan of Allende's all the way back to the beginning. Eva Luna, House of the Spirits, Of Love and Shadows; these books all blew me away. Her lyrical prose, the magical realism style with which she exposes the corruption of unnamed South American countries and opened my eyes to a different world. Then, along came Daughter of Fortune, a novel set in the gold-rush era in California. I loathed that book and hoped for every character to die an terrible death just so the book would end already. I knew there was no way I'd pick up her next book, Portrait in Sepia, and make it out alive. I didn't read her work again until Maya's Notebook, though Ines of my Soul is on my bookshelf. Maya's Notebook was a semi-crime novel but it took a long way to get to the point. I only enjoyed it because it took me back to South America, a place where I feel Allende brings her best self.
But Ripper? Oh, no, no, NO! I tried, I really did. I read over 200 pages before I finally screamed and threw the book. It is described as "an atmospheric, fast-paced mystery involving a brilliant teenage sleuth who must unmask a serial killer in San Francisco." Oh, really now? Fast-paced? Like a snail maybe. How about as fast as an old man walking up Everest using only a cane? Yeah, about that fast. And the teenage sleuth Amanda? She and her forays into an online game called Ripper which she uses to try and solve a series of crimes happening in San Fransisco are brief interludes between the long, long descriptions and back story of her mother, Indiana, and her many lovers and friends. Of course one them is the killer. I hope it isn't the really obvious one. But I skipped to the end and it is! Shocker.
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