Customer Reviews

Brotherly Love

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Taking a chance on an author you've never read can be a frightening proposition - but sometimes you get lucky; and for those of you about to purchase Brotherly Love, you've hit the literary lottery. In this, the first installment of the Sydney Sloane mystery series, author Randye Lordon explores the theme of `family' with an honesty and subtlety few writers in this genre have achieved. It's refreshing to find a mystery novel with a lesbian protagonist that actually reads like a bestseller. Not only is the writing intelligent and the plot entertaining, the characters are likeable and in the end wind up feeling like old friends.

Brotherly Love introduces us to Sydney Sloane, a New York City P.I. who, while sipping a cup of coffee on a leisurely morning at home, finds herself staring down at a picture in the newspaper of one Noah Alexander, an escaped murderer who bears an uncanny resemblance to Sydney's own brother David, a professional con man. The more she stares at the picture, the more she is convinced that the man in the picture is indeed her brother. The problem is, David has been dead for ten years. While her relationship with David had always been troubled, when she had first learned of his death, she wasn't convinced it wasn't just another con. Now Sydney is out to learn the truth: is her brother dead or alive? The quest for an answer puts her very life on the line as dead bodies pile up all around.

Deftly grasping the nuances and idiosyncrasies of familial relationships, Lordon explores the relationship between a sister and brother with unerring honesty. Sydney's struggle to reconcile her memory of David to the truth is at once painful and comforting -- because in the end we realize that we don't have to like our family to love them, and that blood and loyalty are truly the ties that bind.

I'm not usually a mystery reader, but this was excellent. I really liked Sydney Sloan. What a super sleuth! I'd recommend this to anyone who's looking for a good read.