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Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In Keepers: A Port Silva Mystery, sixth in Janet LaPierre's (Baby Mine) series, mother and daughter PIs Patience and Verity Mackellar, two new characters, search for a missing child. An undercover investigation in an insular religious community on California's Lost Coast provides a fitting background for the strange and dangerous goings-on that the Mackellars encounter. (Perseverance/John Daniel, $12.95 paper 252p ISBN 1-880284-44-8) Fifteen Jeffrey Rand and Leila Gaad stories appear in The Old Spies Club: And Other Rand Intrigues, by Edward D. Hoch (The Spy Who Read Latin and Other Stories). Rand, a semi-retired British espionage agent, and his wife Leila, an archeologist, embark on various and sundry Cold War adventures in Cairo, Moscow, London, New York and elsewhere. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
When Mike Mackellar, ex-cop, ex-p.i., paraplegic dart-thrower, loving husband and father, dies, his wife moves to the family's summer home in Port Silva and hangs up her own shingle: Patience Smith, Investigations. Patience has been running the gamut from finding lost pets on up when her daughter Verity flees San Francisco and a failing marriage to join her mother, and soon learns that not even her Stanford MBA can keep her from taking to investigative work. Enter David Simonov, who hires the mother-daughter team to find his ex-wife-beautiful, sad Lilly-and their nonconformist daughter, Sylvie, seven. The search leads south to San Francisco and The Bull and Grizzly, where Lilly's second husband, Simonov's best friend Devlin Costello, lived and patrolled the bar before he too disappeared. Verity takes her soon-to-be ex-husband Ted to the bar with her and beats him at darts, and, later on, at marital wrestling. Meantime, Patience employs her namesake virtue in dealing with Lilly's bitter foster mother and points the search back up north toward the Lost Coast, an ancient redwood forest thronging with marijuana farmers, homeless wanderers, and religious outcasts whose numbers may now include Lilly and Sylvie. Verity, pursued by her own and other demons, arrives at the fundamentalist cult's gate, also seeking sanctuary-but finds that sanctuary, like charity, has its limits. LaPierre (Baby Mine, 1999, etc.) hits the bull's-eye, presenting even the most minor characters with equal parts compassion and judgment against a gorgeous backdrop, and topping the whole show off with a surprise ending.
Booklist Review
A distraught father visits private investigator Patience Mackellar's office in Port Silva, California, seeking to find his missing family. This is the fifth mystery in LaPierre's Port Silva series, in which the characters change but the place remains the same. It's a well-paced story with a difficult-to-solve mystery at its core. LaPierre's portrayal of Port Silva, a fictional community near Mendocino, gets the feel of northern California just right, not only in the descriptions of the rugged coastline and dense woods but also in the people and plotline, which involves a New Ageish religious community. The book's strong female characters and northern California setting will appeal to fans of series by Marcia Muller and Susan Dunlap. This is a solid series that deserves more attention. --John Rowen
