Blue Twilight: A Rachel Porter Mystery (Rachel Porter Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)

by Jessica Speart (Author) "Damn Mister Softee. I couldn't get the ice-cream truck's canned kiddy music out of my head, its jingle playing over and over in endless fashion..." (more)
Key Phrases: butterfly dealer, butterfly trade, nature girl, Big Daddy, Mei Rose, San Francisco (more...)

Editorial Reviews

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"I find myself looking forward to Speart’s newest book each year" -- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Review
"I find myself looking forward to Speart's newest book each year" (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette )

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Avon (August 31, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060559527
• ISBN-13: 978-0060559526
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #169,034 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Winner in a great series, October 10, 2004

By	Cynthia Chow (Kaneohe, Hawaii) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Jessica Speart continues to entertain with the latest installment in her extremely enjoyable and informative Rachel Porter series, BLUE TWILIGHT. Having annoyed her superiors pretty much everywhere she's been stationed as a Fish and Wildlife Service agent, she's now in San Francisco investigating...butterfly poaching? However, when a biologist goes missing and her friend Terri's boyfriend's daughter also disappears Rachel begins to fear that there's a lot more than the obvious going on. And although her boyfriend Jake Santou is back after surviving a brutal plane crash, his addiction to painkillers and alcohol is tormenting both of them. Plus, Terri is having a difficult time finding work as a female impersonator - everyone wants Britney, not Madonna - and Rachel's landlady is determined to teach Rachel how to cook. Yikes. More missing women, a mysterious cult-like figure who is engineering the butterfly poaching, and a bunch of obsessive butterfly collectors round out Rachel's list of problems that will keep her running to the book's exciting conclusion.

Fans who have become disappointed with Nevada Barr should look to this wonderful series that continues to keep up the high level of quality Speart started with in the first Rachel Porter mystery, GATOR AIDE. Rachel is likeable for her humor, her determination, her love of wildlife, and her attitude that really annoys her bosses. The descriptions of San Francisco are also beautifully rendered as Rachel explores Chinatown and the city's wildlife. BLUE TWILIGHT concludes with one of the creepiest scenes written, and I can't encourage readers enough to follow this series. Don't miss it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Speart's Blue Period, October 13, 2005

By	Kara J. Jorges "Avid Reader" (Minneapolis) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I guess every writer has to have a dud book, and this one is Speart's. I have enjoyed her Rachel Porter, US Fish and Wildlife agent series since its inception for its compelling mysteries and wry humor, but this one fell far short of my expectations. While everyone enjoys the back story of the continuing lives of the characters in a series, it is generally enjoyed as a backdrop, not the driving force of the book. Basically, this book didn't have much of a story, jumping from one idea to another, then sloppily knotting them all together at the end.

The story begins with Rachel coming to from a terrifying daydream in the middle of a self-defense class in her new home city of San Francisco. She moved there with FBI agent boyfriend, Jake Santou, and gay transvestite friend, Terri Tune. They're renting apartments from an old Chinese woman, Mae Rose Chang, who makes an attempt to teach Rachel to cook before simply disappearing from the story altogether. Rachel starts out chasing down a butterfly poacher and checking out his lair before moving on to investigate a complaint of a missing biologist in Mendocino, which is supposedly the only known habitat of the rare Lotis blue butterfly. Rachel senses there might be a connection between the missing biologist and the butterfly dealer she busted, so she makes a trip to Mendocino.

She puts all that on the back burner when another gay friend, Eric, shows up, in search of his runaway daughter, Lily. There's a bunch of stuff thrown in about San Francisco's underground vampire community that goes nowhere, and enough pro-alternative lifestyle remarks so as to be a blantant advertisement. There's no doubt about which direction the author's politics lean, which could be a turnoff for any reader who disagrees with them. When the search for Lily turns up a tattoo artist with a connection to the Lotis blue butterfly, it's a bit of a stretch, but some kind of thread was needed to tie all these loose ends together.

Rachel always seems to be one step away from finding Lily, and always manages to stumble onto evidence about the big, evil butterfly dealer she's after at the same time. She apparently enjoys road trips, whimsically zipping between San Francisco and Mendocino on a daily basis (6 hours round trip with sidelines about the Redwood Forest) until the conclusion. Two other things bothered me. Rachel drives an Explorer, yet needed a tow truck to pull her out of the forest when she went off the road, and then she just drove off and kept driving for days without doing any repairs to the vehicle. Also, Rachel never does anything, she BEGINS TO do everything. While I'm complaining, the first murder didn't even occur until almost page 200, and then bodies piled up like crazy in the last chapter. Additionally, I didn't laugh or even smile at anything in this story, whereas Rachel Porter mysteries are usually full of chuckles.

I highly recommend Jessica Speart as an author, but I can only recommend this book to fans of the series who don't want to miss a piece of Rachel's story. This book was a giant disappointment to me, and I fervently hope it is merely indicative of a temporary slump, and not a major downturn for this otherwise very enjoyable series.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Blue Twilight, September 8, 2004

By	Huntress Reviews (United States) - See all my reviews

The rare Lotis Mission Blue butterfly, is every collectors' dream piece. Very few have the Lotis Blue. When the biologist originally sent to investigate an illegal butterfly trade goes missing, Rachel Porter is put on the case.

Rachel Porter is an agent for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. She believes the previous person was murdered. While looking into the disappearance, a little girl also goes missing and witnesses start dying. Rachel must quickly learn what makes this butterfly so valued and why collectors are so interested in such a delicate creature. More importantly, why would someone become a cold blooded killer to get one.

**** Definitely a good read! The last thirty pages kept "butterflies" in my stomach. Author Jessica Speart spins a tale that is guaranteed to keep her readers on the edge of their seats and up well into the night. ****

K. Blair