Product Description
Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly A competent, successful and very likable female detective makes her first appearance in this well-executed debut. Abigail Doyle, a systems designer for factories and businesses who has also had occasion to act as a private detective, is one of an environmental group that discovers the body of Gen. Martin Thorne of the Corps of Engineers in an abandoned bunker on Rockaway Beach in New York's borough of Queens. After antagonism flares between Doyle and homicide detective Margaret Standish and because the group's members are suspect, Doyle decides to investigate on her own. Also hired by the general's mother, Doyle finds the general has an unsavory reputation--shady business deals, using his influence to overturn environmental legislation, bullying junior officers, frequenting sordid gay bars. When the general's wife is murdered, Doyle is once again a prime suspect. Meanwhile, she and Standish build a wary, grudging but mutually respectful relationship. Depicting a fast-moving, zestful New York, Ashwood-Collins has created a detective for our time--a hard-driving, high-flying woman in sure command of herself and her destiny. Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal This first novelist concocts a wealthy, cartoon-like efficiency expert/private eye who whirls through an intially interesting case with all the subtlety and wit of Humpty Dumpty. After Abby Doyle and members of her New York hikers club discover the newly dead body of a two-star general, Abby immediately starts sleuthing in order to protect her group. She soon finds herself employed by the general's icy mother. Abby's California daughter turns up out of the blue, wild dogs attack, bodies fall left and right, fake kidnappers appear, etc., etc. Glossed-over details, skimpy facts, and character inconsistencies add nothing to the plot improbabilities. Thumbs down. Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Reviews:
catsalive (Australia) (2008/05/21): The New Year's Day hike is a tradition with the New York Coast Walkers Club, and reluctant walker, Abigail Doyle, finds more than foul weather to grouse about on this particular jaunt. A body in a bunker at Breezy Point, Rockaway, is enough to get anybody's year off to a lousy start. Luckily, efficiency expert cum private investigator, Abby is too tough and smart to be shaken - even by the discovery that the victim is an army general, as well as heir to a prominent fortune, and that she is herself among the prime suspects.
The last thing she expects is to form an alliance with a tall, redheaded police detective named Margaret Standish. More bodies turn up - a general's wife, for one - with Abby always suspiciously on the scene, and she needs every ally she can get. Somebody is out to cover up something, and that somebody doesn't care whom they hurt to do it. Abby and her walking-club friends top the list of possible next victims, but most scary is the danger to her daughter. Even Abby's wily city smarts and her quick hand with a gun and a knife may not be enough to save Jackie; after painful years of estrangement from her child, Abby can barely face the possibility of losing her again.
Meanwhile, Abby is up against some powerful adversaries - from big money developers with land-grabbing on their minds, to top-echelon army brass intent upon closing ranks to avoid scandal at any cost. They all want Abby off the case...or do they?
