Customer Reviews

Intensive Scare Unit (Sarah Deane Mysteries)

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It's been a while since I last read a Borthwick mystery, but I have read all in this series but one. This one was a disappointment. The story started off interestingly enough with a hospital setting and Aunt Julia having to be taken there because of a heart attack. Julia is an interesting and likeable character who has appeared in many of the earlier books. But then the story started to drag -- there'd be long sections with no plot progress, and the relationship between Sarah and her doctor husband, Alex, was nearly non existant or strained, unlike in prior books where they frequently worked together. It was fairly obvious who the villians were a good hundred pages before the end, so a very slow finish. I won't abandon Borthwick because she's a fine writer, will just hope her next book measures up to the earlier ones.

If you find it frightening to go into the hospital, you might want to avoid this book. It will make anyone paranoid.

The premise is pretty simple. What if someone starts harming people in the hospital rather than helping them?

In the case of Intensive Scare Unit, Sarah Dean's aunt, the independent and irascible Julia Clancy, faints and finds herself unwillingly in the hospital. While there, she becomes an unwitting witness to the preparations for a violent murder. Telling all and sundry about the experience, she manages to alert those who want to silence her . . . but not too many others. In the meantime, the cardiologists insist on a cardiac bypass operation, so she's now a target. Sarah realizes that and tries to intercede, but doesn't always succeed. Soon, Sarah has drawn the attention of the evildoers.

For those who like stories about hospital life, procedures and relationships, this book works pretty well. The story develops nicely and slowly in a way that allows these elements to be highlighted.

But the mystery only receives a little attention every 30-40 pages. In between, there's a lot of hand-wringing but not much plot progress. I wouldn't have minded that but before the book is half done it's very clear who the villains are. All that remains is to find out what their motives are. So the second half dragged for me, even though it has some extended action sequences. I finished the book, but didn't really feel rewarded for doing so.

When feisty riding school owner Julia Clancy is rushed to hospital with a suspected heart attack, she is prepared for surgery, sedated and parked in a cubible. Through a chink in the curtains surrounding the cubicle, she sees a battered old man propped on a stool. The curtains are then closed but shortly after, she sees a body with its head covered being wheeled past on a gurney.
She voices her concerns to her niece Sarah Dean, an English professor at a nearby college, and wife to Julias' doctor Alex. Her observations are heard by many of the hospital staff and when, shortly after her surgery, she again raises the subject of dead bodies being trundled around the corridors, her worries are passed off as the ramblings of an old lady suffering post operational delusions, brought on by the effects of anesthesia and shock. When two more murders occurr in the hospital, Julia and Sarah resort to their hobby of amatuer sleuthing, even though both of them become uncomfortably close to the events. M/s Borthwicks' novels in this series are set in Maine, USA and are of the friendly, homesy-folkesy style..pleasant, but very easy to work out.

This Borthwick mystery is my favorite. Featuring a wonderful take-charge, no-nonsense character in Julia Clancy, this story has lively dialogue, and a real hospital setting. Alex and Sarah find themselves in the middle of murder plots that swirl around Julia as she recovers from heart surgery. By turns funny and charming and...serious and intriguing.

I wish there were a warning on certain cozy mysteries: incredibly stupid protagonist makes the same mistakes she did in all the previous books. Borthwick's "heroine" Sarah Deane, despite tangles with murderers in previous books, ignores all warnings by police and her husband to lock her car -- even at home -- and to stop sticking her nose into everyone's business, including police investigations. Yes, I know it's a plot device, but surely Borthwick can write a decent cozy about an intelligent nosy-parker. Furthermore, don't we all know by now not to pick up evidence without protecting it from our fingerprints?

I gave up Ann Granger's books for the same reason: her protagonist destroys evidence and confronts the murderer alone, not telling her detective/lover about the clues she has uncovered.

And for goodness sake, if your protagonist is an English teacher, check carefully for the worst grammatical errors, even in colloquial speech. On one page alone, Aunt Julia corrects Mike for a typical no-no -- and then proceeds to make an equally horrific one.

To give Borthwick credit where due, she has come a long way from the awkwardness of her first book (although the book previous to this one is a bit clumsy); her characters -- well, some of them -- are a bit better "fleshed out". She does, as mentioned by another reviewer, have the more-must-be-better disease, where each subsequent book gets longer by adding more and more filler.

Somehow I managed to make it to the end of this book, skipping bits here and there. It was frustrating - a few of the characters were well-drawn - Aunt Julia and her mother, for example - but most were so bland it was hard to remember who was who.

The setting, a hospital in Maine, was similarly frustrating. The hospital itself was well drawn. Maine could have been anywhere from Kansas to Utah if you threw in a coastline.

I can usually identify with a female protagonist, but not this one, she was bland and featureless, her husband even more so. The plot, well, the writer doesn't bother with actual plot twists, she just throws in a few wierd events that don't relate meaningfully to anything and has everybody driving off in all directions. Finally the motivation. The one I hate most - he/she did it because he/she was crazy.

Some humor or some attitude might have lifted this book out of the doldrums; it definitely isn't this writer's best work.

After a dizzy spell when she almost loses consciousness Julia Clancy is forced by her employee to go to the emergency room where she notices a man sitting quietly in the waiting room looking like he wants to go ten rounds with Lennox Lewis. While she is being examined, she sees the same man in the cubicle next to hers. The man turns out to be the former CEO of the hospital, who is found murdered in a wheelchair in the men's room.

Julia is admitted to the CCU and tests show she needs an operation to unblock an artery. Her niece Sara Deanne is at the hospital to give her favorite aunt moral support. After the surgery, Julia wakes up to find someone strangling her and she screams for help. The medical personnel believe she was hallucinating due to the effects of the anesthesia. Two other killings occur making Julia and Sara believe these murders and attempted killings are linked. They intend to unmask the perpetrator before they become victims four and five.

Once a reader finishes INTENSIVE SCARE UNIT, they will be frightened to death to go to an emergency room. Sara should get a private detective license and forget about teaching because she is such a good sleuth. Sara would also make a fine police officer because she has the intelligence to do well on the job and the intuition needed to ferret out the perpetrators. J. .S. Borthwick has written another delightful amateur sleuth mystery that will please her myriad of fans.

Harriet Klausner