Customer Reviews

Kiss of the Bees

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

As the very effective sequel to Hour of the Hunter, Judith A. Jance has composed another work of genious with Kiss Of The Bees!(KOTB) Those of you who are fans of the regrettably, often-overlooked Hour Of The Hunter(HOTH)will again be rapt with fear and wonderas you read through the pages of this beautifully crafted blend of Native American legend and tradition; South Western culture, and murder. Do not, however, be lulled by the Native American story that begins each chapter, because what follows may be the most chilling description of assault and murder you will ever read!

Jance has a long list of comfortable charaters that recur in her Beaumont and Brady books. "Bone", the wonderful large wolfhound-like mutt/hero that appeared in HOTH and is reprised briefly as a memory in KOTB is such a character. But many characters in KOTB are in one way or the other rising above grave traumas that have occurred in their lives. This is a book in which Jance does not let the reader or the characteras get too comfortable. Dianna Ladd Walker continues to recover from her terrifying experience with Andrew Carlisle.(HOTH) Brandon Walker is cutting and stacking wood to help him deal with the betrayal of his son, Quentin, the disappearance and presumed death of another son, and defeat in his incumbent election for sheriff. Rita Antone/Nana DAHD is orphaned as child; her only son has died, and is living outside of the Native American culture. Lanita Walker lost her natural family and almost died as the result of being badly stung by "Little People"(ants, wasps,and bees)as a toddler.

Andrew Carlisle and Mitch Johnson may be the least comfortable characters that Jance has penned to date. We don't want to kow that people like this really exist. Disturbingly, these characters are difficult to unload once they have made their way into the reader's mind. Would their demises be really be enough to put the away for good?

Loyal Jance readers know that they can depend on her to tie up all of the loose ends before the last sentence is written. Thae fact that many of these characters have survived lives filled with tragic events is a tribute to their strength and complexity. I highly recommend Kiss Of The Bees to mystery readers everywhere, but with fair warning. This book is not a Brady or a Beaumont. It is a Walker. Get this one "hot off the press" and plan to set some time aside for immediate reading! You will not want to put this one down! If you have not read Hour Of The Hunter, you have missed a gem!

In Kiss of the Bees Ms Jance follows the story of the Walker family and the Indian traditions discussed in Hour of the Hunter. However, in this book there is much more detail of the mysteries involved in the Indians' belief in medicine men and women. I found the brutality of the man (tutored by the villain in her first book) who continued to pursue Diana Ladd Walker by tormenting and torturing her 16 year old daughter hard to read. My husband was so turned off he refused to finish the book after the first 50 pages. I stuck with it and found by the end it was a very special story of the power of faith and endurance by a serious young woman much more mature than her 16 years. There are lessons to be learned here, and I am glad I stayed till the end! However, one night at 3 AM I read some of it and couldn't get back to sleep! I prefer Jance's lighter stories, especially about Joanna Brady. But it is interesting that she can also write this kind of book. I have heard her lecture and some of her story is autobiographical--she taught at one time on the reservation, her first husband had gone to the University of Arizona, etc. Interesting how she was able to tie it in.

J. A. Jance is a superb story teller, and "Kiss of the Bees" is Jance at her best. In it, a convict, Mitch Johnson, under the tutelage of his cellmate and mentor, Andrew Carlisle, is released from prison and carries out a sadistic plot of revenge against a former county sheriff and his family. Jance has done extensive research into Native American folklore, bringing a mythological context to this battle between good and evil. This is a skillfully-plotted thriller that will please the most demanding of armchair adventure seekers.

An avid Jance fan, I was greatly disappointed by Kiss of the Bees. Between the Native American legends, multiple flashbacks, information inconsistencies and extremely fortutious coincidences, the story is hard to follow. I reached page 100 and realized that I didn't care about any of the chacters, perhaps because they didn't come across as real people. Also the blood and gore seemed gratitutious -oh, here is a chance to show what a bad guy the killer is- rather than adding to a scarey atmosphere. Also, I'm tired of authors doing the Indian is a mystic power who communicates with the other world, so all the one character has to do is touch the book and he knows bad things are going to happen. It just came across as false and cliche. I love J.J. Jance's other books. I hope she goes back to writing those kind of books - page-turning thrilling plots, and real characters.

When I began reading, the earlier crime seemed so familiar. Then I realized that this is a part two of Hour of the Hunter. It is just if not more violent. It starts really slowly, mainly because Jance spends a great deal of time setting up the character histories, local color, and Native American legends. Then the plots resumes speed and gets interesting. There is no real main character, but by the end I was so invested in Davy, Brian, and Lania that the book WAS WORTH THE SLOW START. It is certainly not like either of her series but I'm glad I purchased the hard cover.

I always look forward to a new J. A. Jance and couldn't wait for this one. It's pretty dark and doesn't really compare with J P Beaumont or JoAnna Brady series, but it is a good read. It took a while for me to remember the story line as the first book was published some time ago. I do recommend it to adults who enjoy the JA Jance books. Read Hour of the Hunter first and you won't have the slow start that I did.

When I read this book, I did not know that it was a sequel to Ms. Jance's "Hour of the Hunter." I guess that explains why the book puzzled me at times with it's flashbacks of what must have happened in that book.

Jance does a credible job in interweaving her Indian folklore and her rather complex, if convuluted, melodramatics. I did find, however, that after a while, the Indian tales got to be a little tedious, and hard to follow.

Diana Ladd and David Ladd (come on, Jance, both of these names are well-known actors, wouldn't it have been better to use something a little more original?) are very shallow and unsympathetic characters in this book. I don't know how they came off in the first book, but they don't evoke a lot of sympathy in this sequel. The husband, Brandon, comes across very brutish and callous in the beginning, and even when he mellows out as tragedy befalls his family, the change isn't very believable. The character of Quentin, his son, is irreprehensible, and I don't know why Jance allows him to hang around at the book's ending.

The villains, both Andrew Carlisle and Mitch Johnson, are mere effigies of villains given us by masters Jeffrey Deaver and James Patterson.

I haven't read Ms. Jance's series novels, but this one doesn't really entice me to do so.

This is not by any means an awful book, but it is a difficult read and does not move as fast as it should.

JA Jance attempts to steep us deeper in her beloved Southwest, this time including some Tohono O'otham culture. She plays fast and loose with the timeline to give us bits and pieces of the lives of the characters until we reach the climax. But, instead of being intriguing, this is confusing. All the characters know details we don't until by the time we've already figured them out, they're tardily revealed.

Diana Ladd Walker and Brandon Walker have a very modern family. Both divorced with children of previous marriages, one adopted daughter, and one tossed-in stepson, plus assorted close friends, make this group diverse. Brandon has two sons, Quentin and Tommy, though Tommy is missing and presumed dead. Brandon's ex-wife remarried and had another child, Brian Fellows, who spent time with the Walkers while growing up. Diana's son from her first or second marriage is Davy Ladd. Then Diana and Brandon adopted a Tohono O'otham girl, Lani. Lani and Davy were both raised by an old Indian woman, Rita Antone. Rita and the tribal medicine man, Fat Crack, or Gabe Ortiz, had been close to Looks At Nothing, a blind medicine man, now dead.

Every chapter begins with a piece of an Indian legend, poorly told. The legend ties in at the end, but I hadn't really been paying attention. But, it's supposed to tie in Indian medicine with the events in the story.

Twenty years back, Diana Walker was attacked and raped by Andrew Carlisle. He would have killed her, but she flung a pan of hot bacon grease in his face and her dog attacked. Andrew Carlisle, now blind, went to prison. He was joined a few years later by Mitch Johnson, a trigger-happy immigrant hater who gets sent up by then-Sheriff Brandon Walker. Andrew and Mitch form an unholy alliance of hate against the Walkers. Andrew dies in prison, but he and Mitch formulated a plan for Mitch to carry out on his release. The two also met Quentin Walker, Brandon's eldest, loser son, in prison, and use him as a pawn.

Mitch kidnaps Lani and prepares to put her through an Andrew Carlisle-type murder on tape and blame Quentin, thereby utterly destroying Brandon and Diana Walker. Davy arrives from Chicago just in time to help Lani. Fat Crack uses divining crystals and goes to the scene, leading the others there. In the end, Lani uses her Indian teachings to defeat the enemy.

The climax was gripping, but there was a long, slow, roundabout route to get there. There were too many characters and the back story was too sparsely delivered, making me feel I should have read the prequel first. Though it wasn't bad, it could have been better.

It's too bad that this book is so bound to it's predecessor....I can't imagine reading it without having read Hour of the Hunter first. Once again I loved the story telling parts about the Native American culture, but I found the characters in this to be shallow and not as believeable. Perhaps I am tired of spending my time reading stories about these psychopaths who just want to get even. There were parts that I found somewhat unbelievable in the characters--the husband, ex-sheriff was a wood cutting wimp for most of the book. The son couldn't make up his mind or take a stand about his marriage--and the guy was going to be a lawyer! Come on, j.a., I think you can do better. I sure hope you do not visit this poor tortured family again with yet another sequel! I'd probably have to read it...

This book was frustrating to read without having read any of the preceding book(s), which I didn't know existed until I read the reviews online. Certainly there was nothing on the book jacket, much less in the novel that indicated that all those characters and relationships that were not fully explained came from a previous manuscript. The Indian lore and character and Lani were delightful, and made the book a real pleasure to read, but I really was wondering why the book was published with so many dead-ends and unexplained events. There are ways of bringing a reader who enters a sequel unprepared up to speed, without boring the savvy reader, but I didn't encounter them. It's worth reading, but I wish I'd read the preceding book first.