Customer Reviews

Act of Betrayal

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Buchanan's Britt Montero is a tough independent woman--which is always nice to see but her relationship with her fictional partners is weird. In ACT OF BETRAYAL, the reader is never privy to why Montero and McDonald's relationship is on and off. Furthermore, the author never allows the reader to glimpse, in any depth, what goes on in Montero's brain after the unexpected meeting of the two men in her life. I noticed the same lack of depth in MARGIN OF ERROR--as far as whoever Montero's present heart throb happened to be. The romances are sort of eruptive and then dormant. In addition to a lack of depth in part of Montero's character, a lack of depth was evident in other parts of the book. For instance, I found the reason behind Reyes' perversion to be very weak and unsatisfying. I also found that the plot would ebb and flow with too much detail and then not enough. The plot would nearly stumble and then rush to finish.

Edna Buchanan writes about Miami as only she can. A Pulitzer prize winning former crime reporter fo the Miami Herald, she is totally familiar with her subject. This excellent crime novel mixes Cuban exile politics, missing boys and a fierce hurricane. The resulting stew is very tasty. It is all very believable since Miami is such a strange place anyway. Her heroine, Britt Montero puts herself in great jeopardy, but at the end prevails over the bad (VERY bad) guy and at the same time, learns a lot about herself. Highly recommended for mystery fans

Loved this book as much as all of Buchanan's work. A fabulous read, full of suspense. I highly recommend this book.

For the record, I am reviewing this book as a book on tape. The dastardly plots amongst the Cuban exile community keeps this book racing along. Unfortunately, the soap opera of Britt's erratic love life slowed the story down. Nevertheless, it is a good book and I gladly recommend it.

As for the book on tape aspect - it was very well read, including pretty good accents for the aging Cuban conspirators. Good job.

This book has it all -- murder, kidnapping, political prisoners, mother/daughter conflicts and even an Act of God. Once the action starts, it doesn't stop. I have a few small quibbles with the book (for instance, the crime that starts the book is never fully explained), but it doesn't really detract from your enjoyment. Best of all, I liked Britt. Her frustration about her story of a lifetime getting pushed to the back burner really rang true with me.

A gadfly to some in the Cuban Exile Community, Miami reporter Alex Aguirre is killed by a car bomb. Police reporter, Britt Montero is the first one to scene. As she files her report a blonde man walks in carrying a folder and Britt thinks oh oh here comes a crazy fanatic. But MacDonald brings her a story that she can't walk away from: his 13 year old son, Charles, has been missing for four years and the police may never have investigated. Too old and not a pretty young girl for national exposure her friend, Lottie muses.

As Britt follows up on the bombing, she quickly discovers other boys missing; all about the same age and looks. Driven, she keeps on searching while forced to write a profile on a prominent Cuban Exile leader, Juan Carlos Reyes. Oddly, she thinks nothing of the fact that this is the third time she has written about him in almost as many days all the while a tropical wave is heading towards South Florida. Charles MacDonald had disappeared on his way to Reyes' home to clean his boat when the teen disappeared and Aguirre was a thorn in his side.

Reyes and Jorge Bravo (another major player in the Exile community) both claim to have known her late father and have something that belonged to the young freedom fighter. Desperate to find answers about her father and her missing boys, Britt searches almost frantically for those answers. She has taken the bait.

While the bomber's identity is implied, the crime wasn't really solved nor the explanation behind the missing boys' abductor's perversity never quite explained satisfactorily. Nor was her mother's animosity toward her young husband satisfying. Montero's fling with an ax killer was believable. One minute, she is pining away for her on and off again then sleeps with a guy who may have justifiably killed an intruder? Even in Miami, that is somewhat over the top. The hurricane (unnamed) that becomes a major character in the novel is a thin reference to Hurricane Andrew may have been a dramatic denouement to one plot line bugged me because Andrew happened years before the Act of Betrayal storylines happened, a minor flaw but that culminated me to give ACT OF BETRAYAL 3 ½ stars rather than 4 stars.

Britt Montero is a half-Cuban newspaper reporter living in Miami. Britt claims to resent too much being made of her Cuban heritage, but focuses on little else, and the other half of her heritage doesn't even rate mention. While Britt is onto a big story about missing boys who all look alike, and tries to devote her time to gathering information for it, her personal life and Cuban roots keep getting in the way. She finally decides to take the time to delve into the mysteries of her own past when a prominent Cuban figure who has insisted only Britt may interview him reveals that he once knew her father. He also tells Britt about her father's diary, which supposedly still exists, even 30 years after her father was executed by Castro. Britt becomes even more entangled in Cuban exile politics when another of her father's old pals embroils her in his dramas. It all comes to a head with the arrival of a hurricane, which also ties in with the missing boys from Britt's big story, which answers all of Britt's questions, but leaves some of her issues unsolved.

The things that I disliked about this book are minor. Britt's best bud is a gullible idiot who gives an obvious liar and cheat way too many chances. Britt's either not too bright herself, or just a lousy friend, because she encourages it every time. Then, too much stuff tied together at the end, kind of a 2-for-1 special that would have been better kept separate. Also, Britt didn't solve her mysteries through deductive reasoning, but rather through dumb luck, which isn't my favorite way to see a suspense draw to a close.

While I didn't hate the book, I didn't find much to rave about, either. Britt is likeable enough, but doesn't have anything about her that stands out. She's not incredibly funny or clever, the side characters aren't all that special, and nothing particularly amazing happens. It's just sort of...vanilla. The story was good enough not to bore me, but not compelling enough to meke me pick up the book if I had something else I could do instead. It's just another selection from another mystery series with a female lead. Some people who really love books like that will likely love this one, but I like something with a little more oomph. I won't recoil in horror when I see Edna Buchanan books for sale, but I won't be knocking anyone over to get at them, either.

Like the author once did, Britt Montero thrives as a driven, resourceful crime reporter for steamy Miami's major daily. But the car-bombing of a Cuban journalist gives her job an uncomfortably personal dimension and perhaps it's that which compels her to look into an old missing-boy case for a distraught parent. Montero's digging uncovers a disturbing pattern of similar-looking missing boys, all thought to be runaways and given short shrift by the police.

But Montero is taken off the story in order to conduct an interview with a difficult leader of the Cuban-American community. Half-Cuban herself and long feeling an empathy with her dead freedom-fighter father, Montero accepts the assignment unwillingly but finds Juan Carlos Reyes intriguing.

Unbeknownst to her, Reyes knew her parents. He claims to have a diary of her father's somewhere in storage and promises to find it for her. Montero's mother suddenly refuses to speak to her and another old Cuban, a blustery fighter still trying to mount an invasion, tells a different story about the diary, tying it into the journalist's bombing murder.

The two story lines unfold in parallel as a killer hurricane (which Montero ignores) summons strength for an attack on Miami. Buchanan brings it all together in a splintering, action-packed conclusion featuring mayhem, murder and gruesome revelation. A fast-paced story, determined, likable heroine and rich Miami setting.

Act of betrayal was a wonderful book. I was interested in from the word go. It took fiction to a new level. This book kept me in supense for a long time. When it was time to stop listening to it. I couldn't wait to get back to it. I love this book.

This is another book review by Wolfie and Kansas, the boonie dogs from Toto, Guam. Going into the final few chapters, Edna Buchanan's "Act of Betrayal" is a better-than-average mystery novel. However, we were still skeptical at that point. From reviews we had read, we knew that the climax of the book included a hurricane. ("Hurricane" is the name that people living near the Atlantic Salt Lake have given to their typhoons.)

We have been through two typhoons here on Guam, and our noncanine animal companions of primate derivation have been through eight or nine. Therefore, we did not expect a fictional account of a hurricane to create much suspense for us. We assumed the climax of "Act of Betrayal" would be the literary equivalent of a banana typhoon, a low-level typhoon that knocks over banana trees but not much else. Our assumptions were wrong. Buchanan is a good enough writer to make her description of a hurricane exciting even for typhoon veterans like us