Bonnie Jack

May 3, 2021
This glacially paced novel with minor mystery subplots from Hamilton (the Ava Lee series) focuses on Jack Anderson, the head of a successful Massachusetts insurance company. On Thanksgiving 1989, Jack reveals to his family that he has lied about his past to everyone, including his wife, Anne. When Anderson was six years old, his mother took him and his older sister, Moira, to a movie double feature in Glasgow, Scotland, where they lived. After the first film ended, she told Jack she was just going to take Moira to the bathroom; instead, she abandoned him. When the authorities contacted Jack’s father, the father told them he wasn’t interested, and Jack ended up in foster care, eventually getting adopted by an American couple, whom Anderson has said are his birth parents. Jack finds Moira, who agrees to meet, and after Jack and Anne travel to Scotland, they learn more family secrets and wind up dealing with violent criminals. Hamilton tells rather than shows, an approach that further lessens the emotional impact of the plot’s surprises. Contrivances that enable resolution of serious issues don’t aid engagement with either the story or its characters. This is for Hamilton fans only.

June 1, 2021

Shrewd, obsessive business tycoon "Bloody" Jack Anderson is entering his sunset years. He has many fears: losing control, missing out, facing the vast oceans of peace and repose that await him in retirement and threaten endless rumination. Abandoned by his mother in a Glasgow movie theater, he was adopted by an American family who provided him the cultural capital to become successful. Jack and his wife Anne leave the comfortable Boston suburbs for the ancient environs of Scotland, in search of answers and Jack's biological sister. He discovers biological siblings and extended family, some of whom are poorer than he and challenge his meritocracy-based worldview. Family trauma and healthy and unhealthy relationships weave together in this stand-alone by Hamilton ("Ava Lee" series). It's a combination of a rags-to-riches tale, rebirth story, reversal of fortune, and confronting-a-monster (Jack's violent birth father) story. Subthemes about the duality of human nature and siblings' differing memories of a parent keep the plot going. VERDICT Mystery fans will enjoy the twists and turns of this engaging tale about what money can and can't buy.--Adrian Morales, El Paso Community Coll., TX

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 28, 2021
During a family get-together at his Boston-area home, Jack makes a startling announcement: 54 years ago, in 1934, he was abandoned by his mother at a movie theater in Glasgow, Scotland. The man and woman Jack's wife has known as his parents were his adoptive parents. And Jack has a sister, who is still living in Scotland. Jack and his wife, Anne, decide to go to Scotland, where he will reunite with his sister and where Jack will learn the truth about the family he never knew. Hamilton, author of the Ava Lee mystery series, turns in a stellar performance in this stand-alone. Like Jeffrey Archer (in his Clifton Chronicles), Hamilton pulls us into the story with carefully crafted characters, and keeps us involved by increasing the complexity of the tale: introducing a mystery here, uncorking a shocking revelation there. The book is a departure from the author's more traditional mystery fiction, but his fans will find much here that is familiar: realistic dialogue, characters they can care about, and a gripping story.

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