Confession (Jenny Cain Mysteries, No. 9) [Paperback]

Nancy Pickard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 28, 2007

Jenny Cain would never forget the hot Massachusetts summer day fate knocked at her door. Fate was a teenaged boy with rumpled clothes, a motorcycle, and a shocking but credible story: Jenny's husband, Geof, was his biological father. The boy, David Mayer, wasn't looking for an emotional reunion, but he did have an agenda. His parents -- and he was quick to make the point that Geof was nothing to him -- died earlier in the year, a murder/suicide according to the police. The cops were wrong, David said, and Geof was a cop, and he owed it to David to prove that Ron Mayer did not kill his invalid wife and then himself.

As David lured Jenny and Geof to carefully placed clues, including two bizarre videotaped confessions of "sin," another murder was committed. And Jenny knew that no matter what the truth was about David Mayer's parents, her own life and marriage would be altered forever....

Editorial Reviews

Review

Charles Champlin Los Angeles Times Book Review Nancy Pickard pushes at the presumed limits of [crime fiction]....The truth is sad, complicated and surprising, and Pickard offers fine insight to character and relationships.

Judith Kreiner Washington Times Fans of Nancy Pickard and her Jenny Cain character have reason to rejoice....Confession is her best effort to date.

About the Author

Nancy Pickard has won numerous mystery awards for her short stories and novels, including an Anthony Award for Say No to Murder, a Macavity Award for Marriage Is Murder, and two Agatha Awards for Best Novel, for Bum Steer in 1990 and I.O.U in 1991. She was also nominated for an Edgar Award for I.O.U. A former reporter and editor, she is a past president of Sisters in Crime, the international association of mystery writers and fans. She lives in Kansas, where she is working on a new mystery to be published by Pocket Books.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Pocket Books (November 28, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416587748
• ISBN-13: 978-1416587743
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,420,587 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A marked improvement in the series, June 29, 2004

By 

DWD "DWD's Reviews" (Indianapolis, IN) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Confession (Jenny Cain Mysteries, No. 9) (Mass Market Paperback)

This is part of a series of books about Jenny Cain and her police detective husband Geoff. In most of the books, Cain runs a philanthropical organization. In this book, she has left the foundation and is casting about for the finances to start another foundation in order to help the people of the New England seaport city of Port Frederick.

While this is happening her husband has a mysterious visit from a teenage boy who claims that Geoff is his biological father and he wants nothing to do with Geoff except that he use his position as a policeman to re-investigate the murder-suicide of his parents and come up with a different conclusion.

This novel is mostly notable for the fact that its author makes a serious effort to raise the bar in this series of run-of-the-mill mysteries. What she's created here is an actual novel - full of themes and interesting trips into her character's psyches. This book has all of the necessary ingredients for a book discussion group. I was pleasantly surprised.

The only quibble I have with the book is a section about 2/3 of the way through it in which a minister who has been a recurring character throughout the series makes some commentary on sin and forgiveness and Christianity. It is evident that the author truly does not grasp these concepts as they are taught in Christianity so I wish she'd have had the comments made by a different character, rather than a minister. However, this is more than compensated for by the rather surprising twist of an ending - I could not put down the book for the last 20 pages, despite the fact that it nearly made me late for work.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars not her best, November 13, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Confession (Jenny Cain Mysteries, No. 9) (Mass Market Paperback)

I have read many of Nancy Pickard's books & I have loved all of them until Confession. It starts out very slow. I put this book down the first time I started to read it but I went back to it. The second time I started to read it I almost put it down again but I know her books are good so I stayed with it. It did pick up a little & then it would get boring again. I did finish it & the ending was a surprise but not thrilling. It is not a book I will pick up and read again.