Birth Marks [Hardcover]

Sarah Dunant (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 13, 1992

When the body of a talented young dancer, with stones in her pockets and an eight-month-old fetus in her womb, turns up, Hannah Wolfe begins an investigation of the dancer's life that leads her through the dance world of London and Paris.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The tough-as-nails young female sleuth who debuts here is London-based private eye Hannah Wolfe. Hired by an aging former dancer to find a lithe and pretty ballet prodigy who has gone missing, Hannah learns that young Carolyn Hamilton, whose nerves required Valium and whose tender ankles needed medication, has left a trail of impersonal postcards and some hefty credit-card debts. Hannah has barely begun to dig when Carolyn's body--which reveals that she was eight months pregnant--turns up in the Thames. The trail back to her drowning leads across the English Channel to a wealthy family and an old man close to death with no apparent heirs. A refreshing Londoner with an appealing softness under her slick, self-effacing surface, Hannah skirts cheap gumshoe patter. Everywhere she turns she sees youngsters, parents and those who want badly to become parents, and all of seem germane to her nicely resolved case and her awareness that the snooze button on her own biological clock isn't working as it used to. Dunant also wrote Snow Storms in a Hot Climate.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

When sometime private eye Hannah Wolfe is hired to track down Carolyn Hamilton, a missing ballet dancer, it doesn't take her long to find discrepancies between Carolyn's innocuous postcards to her guardian and her disappearance from London months ago. In the meantime, though, Carolyn and her near-term fetus are dead, drowned in the Thames. A new, carefully anonymous client's commission to get to the bottom of Carolyn's death leads Hannah to the French estate where Carolyn took her last job for dying Jules Belmont, of Belmont Aviation, and his young wife Mathilde. There's need of further improbable channel-hopping and some detailed medical revelations, but strong plotting by Dunant (Snow Storms in a Hot Climate, 1988) makes it all worthwhile. Thoughtful, tough-minded Hannah compares herself to every detective under the sun but P. D. James's Cordelia Gray, whose fans should welcome her with open arms. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Doubleday; First Edition edition (September 13, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385423187
• ISBN-13: 978-0385423182
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,778,870 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

The author of the critically acclaimed Hannah Wolfe mystery series, Sarah Dunant is also well known in the United Kingdom for her work as a television host. She lives in London.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars this is a very well-written mystery, August 18, 2006

By 

Sammy Madison (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Birth Marks: A Hannah Wolfe Crime Novel (Paperback)

I'm surprised that there are not a lot of glowing reviews on Amazon of "Birth Marks" by Sarah Dunant. It was first printed in 1992, and my edition was printed in 2005, so there has been plenty of time for readers to discover the Hannah Wolfe series by this excellent author. There are at least three Hannah Wolfe mysteries: "Birth Marks", "Fat Lands", and "Under My Skin". These are not re-runs of 1950s gumshoe detective stories, or old British ladies solving village mysteries. Hannah is like Bridget Jones, if Bridget doubled her IQ and went to work for a London detective agency. She's smart, young, single, urban, and hip. In "Birth Marks", Hannah is hired by an aging balarina to locate her missing protege. When she turns up in the Thames, dead and pregnant, Hannah feels compelled to track down her killer. This is a very exciting, literate mystery. If you read this one, you'll have to read all three books. They are really good.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars highly evolved, June 24, 2008

By 

Julia M. Walker (NY Finger Lakes) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Birth Marks: A Hannah Wolfe Crime Novel (Paperback)

The dancer Hannah Wolfe was hired to find turns up dead, but that doesn't keep her from becoming a complex character. Dunant's characters are like Hirschfeld portraits - economical, vivid, and inscribed with her own maker's mark. The aging ballet mistress, the invisible cop-mentor, the eyelashes, the French beauties, they all leap off the page with very little ink needed. It's a book about people, Hannah most of all, but also her sister and her view of the world. You'll think you know the twist at the end, but you will be wrong.

Sarah Dunant is a wonderful writer. Her prose is crisp and clever and so is her detective. Hannah Wolfe colors outside the lines, but carefully. Unlike VI Warshawski and Alex Tanner, Hannah doesn't go blindly/willfully into dangerous situations; she makes phone calls telling people her location - then she steps into the shadows. I wonder if the detective's feminine name is further evidence that Dunant doesn't feel she has anything to prove in these books. Hannah is a truly evolved independent professional.

The first-person narration is so witty that you'll laugh in inappropriate places. Dunant's character is monarch of the throw-away line. After her ego suffers a black-eye, Hannah comforts herself with a series of platitudes, then remarks "A poultice of cliché's brought down the swelling." She's a self-critical narrator, but ironic and sardonic rather than depressed or bitter. Hannah is such a 21st-century hero that it's a triple shame Dunant seems to have let the series lapse.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Read, August 26, 2008

By 

magali picasso (HB, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Birth Marks (Kindle Edition)

Great female detective story. All plausable situations. Keeps you guessing all the way through. Page turner!!!