52 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good story, but missing the sensuality and snappy dialogue, July 3, 2006
This review is from: Cover of Night: A Novel (Hardcover)
Cate is still mourning the loss of her husband who died three years earlier of an infection, leaving her with infant twin boys. Realizing that she could not make ends meet in Seattle, she moves to a small town in Idaho and buys a B&B. When her latest guest leaves via the window rather than the front door and does not come back the next day, she notifies the police. Meanwhile, the town is trying desperately to get Cate and the local handyman, Cal together - even going so far as to sabotage her plumbing, but she does not seem to notice him.
The guest is Jeffrey Layton, an accountant who is blackmailing a Chicago gangster. He has info on a flash drive that would ruin the gangster, and he has left a trail straight to Cate's door. When the gangster hires thugs to bring Jeffrey and the flash drive in, they rough up Cate and her friend and have a run-in Cal, who would do anything to protect Cate. The thugs leave with bruised egos and Layton's suitcase. Sensing danger, Cate has her mother take the twins to Seattle for a visit, which turns out to be smart. The two thugs come up with a ridiculous plan to take the town hostage to obtain the flash drive when they determine that she did not give them all Layton's luggage.
When the hired thugs (their numbers swollen to six) strike, all hell breaks loose in Trail Stop, Idaho. Little do they know Cal is a former Special Forces soldier - a one man army if you will. With the aid of his former mentor Joshua Creed, Cal organizes the townspeople who are cut off from the outside world. Cate and Cal are forced to climb their way out of the valley via a sheer cliff to obtain help.
While the plot is engaging, there is a lack of chemistry between the main characters. We know Cal is in love with Cate, but Cate never even noticed him, so her sudden turnaround is hard to buy. The requisite love scene between the two comes so late in the story that it seems like a last minute add on. Also in short supply is the snappy dialogue that keeps the pace of a typical Howard novel. While I enjoyed this novel, it certainly is not in my top 10 LH faves.
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43 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
It could have been very good., July 7, 2006
This review is from: Cover of Night: A Novel (Hardcover)
I was so excited to get this book. The storyline was so promising, but I didn't think it went deep enough. As a previous reviewer remarked, Cate didn't notice Calvin until half way into the book. We got Cate's take on things, but rarely a glimpse at what Calvin was thinking, feeling, ect. That is the element that was missing in her story. It seemed like it was rushed or something. I love Linda Howard, but this one is not her best work. Wait until it comes out in paperback.
Some of her best works are: Mr. Perfect, Kill and Tell, and Now You See Her.
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28 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Could have been titled "The Incredibles" ......, August 13, 2006
This review is from: Cover of Night: A Novel (Hardcover)
This book is yet another disappointment from Linda Howard, who seems to have lost her ability to write either mystery or romance. Cover of Night is slow starting, repetitive,--Howard tells us again and again what a good, responsible person and mother Cate is, which, since she's our plucky heroine, we assume is a given--and overwritten, an ongoing problem with Howard. In attempting to establish character, she consistently tells the reader too much, as though she doesn't trust her audience to "get" it. Here's an example: Describing Cate's self-sacrifice and unselfishness, Howard writes: "Just about the only extra grooming she had time for these days was keeping her legs and underarms shaved, which she did because--well, just because. Besides, all it took was an [the edition I bought has a typo of two "ans"]--extra three minutes in the shower." Judicious editing would have reduced this description to: "Just about the only extra grooming she had time for these days was keeping her legs and underarms shaved," which is more than enough to let us sympathize with this busy mother of twins and owner of a Bed and Breakfast, who doesn't take enough time for herself. To tell more is the mark of a bad writer, and makes the reader (at least this reader) impatient. Perhaps Howard is not to blame as much as her editors for passages like this, but the book is full of them. It is also uneven. The action sequences are marginally better, crisper, without all the interior monologues or descriptions of motivation that slow the first part of the book down and make it--and its heroine-- dull. Are these sequences better edited or is Howard just better at describing action than she is in creating characters? Hard to know; neither work all that well here.
There are other problems, too, but the most serious is its incredible plot. WARNING: plot revelations follow. Howard's own characters say it best: "Toxtel's plan was one of the most idiotic things he'd ever heard in his life....." and later, "This whole thing was so over the top it didn't make sense." The "plan," so to speak, is to blow up bridges, put an entire town under seige, take the inhabitants hostage, and kill innocent citizens--all in order to recover an item which the protagonists ONLY ASSUME IS HIDDEN IN THE TOWN! The expense of such an operation alone makes it unbelievable, never mind the impracticality or logistics of it. The plan's mastermind is not even portrayed as an out-of-control, power-hungry madman, who might conceivably come up with such a deranged idea, but simply as a rather plodding hitman, angry because his first attempt to recover the object failed. Almost as incredible is our hero's action in allowing these bad guys to leave town in the first place, when any thinking, sane person would have turned them over to authorities. But of course they had to leave town so that the remainder of the plot--and I use the term lightly--could unfold.
CofN is also highly predictable; I knew our hero and heroine would have reason to climb a mountain from the first moment we learn they have climbing experience. But even then, the climb is aborted, as though Howard herself grew bored with it. And then there is the relationship between Cate and our hero, which other reviewers have commented on and which I agree only adds to our disbelief. In this, as well as in other aspects of the story, Cate comes off as slightly stupid, while our hero challenges our believability by doing a sudden about-face (no pun intended) from blushing, stammering handyman to Super Marine. Precocious, baby-talking four-year olds and assorted other good and bad characters with mysterious pasts help clutter the landscape but do little to enrich the story.
Again, I cannot help but suspect that Cover of Night is an earlier unpublished Howard manuscript which has been updated and offered to an audience eager for her next best seller. If I'm wrong and this is the level of her current writing, then I also can't help anticipating future Howard offerings with a certain amount of trepidation.
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