Murder Never Forgets (A Carla Day Mystery) [Kindle Edition]

Diana O'Hehir (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Novelist-poet O'Hehir (Pulitzer Prize-nominated I Wish This War Were Over ) turns her talents to a gracefully executed thriller that explores how memories can both protect and endanger us. Carla Day, the 25-year-old daughter of world-renowned Egyptologist Edward Day, is worried about her aging father, whose behavior has become dangerously erratic as suffers the early stages of Alzheimer's. Increasingly agitated, he insists that a woman was murdered and wrapped in a golden net. Edward lives at Green Beach Manor, an exclusive assisted living facility near Berkeley, California. His confusion and weakening mental state, however, have the Manor's staff threatening to move him to their tighter-security psychiatric building, Hope House, an "auxiliary facility" from which no one ever returns. To be near her father-and to get a handle on some sinister goings-on-Carla takes a job as an aid at the home. Is her father delusional or did he really witness a murder? The home's threatening atmosphere turns fatal when Carla discovers a dead body, and with the help of her on-again-off-again boyfriend Robbie, she determines to figure out what's happening at Green Beach Manor and protect her father at all costs.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Combining a traditional murder mystery with a subtle portrait of a complex father-daughter relationship, the author of the highly regarded I Wish This War Were Over (1984) offers a fascinating, genre-bending mix of literary and crime fiction. When Carla Day goes to visit her father at Green Beach Manor, an expensive nursing home on the California coast, she doesn't like what she finds. Her former Egyptologist father, who is slowly succumbing to Alzheimer's, claims to have witnessed a murder on a secluded beach near the nursing home. No one believes him--he's an Alzheimer's patient, after all--except Carla. When more odd things begin happening at Green Beach, including a resident finding glass in her food and an employee being murdered, Carla decides to stay on as an aide so she can keep an eye on her father and try to determine exactly what took place on that secluded beach. A story that will move and captivate all who read it, especially those who love an elderly parent who is slipping away before their eyes. Jenny McLarin
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 592 KB
• Print Length: 316 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0425205851
• Publisher: Berkley (December 5, 2006)
• Sold by: Penguin Publishing
• Language: English
• ASIN: B001LQYT22
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #670,452 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Over Rated, February 6, 2007

By 

reader "fantasy maven" (Knoxville, TN) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Murder Never Forgets (A Carla Day Mystery) (Paperback)

I purchased this book because it was recommended to me by Amazon. I am usually most pleased with these books, this book is the exception. I had a difficult time getting into to the book. It took almost three months to get to the third chapter, the book was too easy to put down. I found the book to be uninteresting and too disjointed to really enjoy. The characters were poorly developed and there was too much about the past life of the main character that was not explained or else glossed over to make the book seem interesting. All in all I would not recommend this book nor will I invest in what I am sure will be a forthcoming sequel.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars intriguing amateur sleuth that condemns nursing home "prisons", September 6, 2005

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Murder Never Forgets (Hardcover)

Carla was working at Susie's health Food Store in Santa Cruz when the Green Brach Manor Nursing Home calls to inform her that her father, a victim of Alzheimer's, had deteriorated and will have to be moved to the "no hope house" for closer managed care. Carla believes her beloved dad, once a renowned Egyptologist, would die in the stifling prison like edifice. She journeys to Berkley to be with him and while there asks for a job as an aide assisting patients with their medicine, etc if her dad can stay in the more independent facility. Administrator Mrs. Sisal hires her.

However, odd occurrences begin to happen at the Green Branch starting with a fire, meds missing, the death of an employee, tampered food, and her father blaming everything on a dead woman at the beach that is either near the home or the Pyramids. Mrs. Sisal demands that Carla, who is very popular amongst the patients, spy on them and the staff to learn who is causing the troubles if she and her father are to stay at Green Branch. Reluctantly she begins spying not realizing the danger she places herself in by doing so.

MURDER NEVER FORGETS combines an intriguing amateur sleuth tale with some Egyptologist elements inside a deep family drama. Readers get a taste of what happens at a nursing home which operates more like a hospital prison than a nurturing of our seniors facility. Thus the story line grips readers on two levels: that of the mystery and that of senior citizen health care; together they blend into a fine contemporary thriller.

Harriet Klausner

3.0 out of 5 stars Good Idea, Disappointing Result, November 11, 2011

By 

Ohioan - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Murder Never Forgets (A Carla Day Mystery) (Paperback)

When I first read the glowing magazine and newspaper reviews of this book, I was drawn in by the idea of a mystery set in a retirement home and nursing center. But I found this a difficult book to read because there is very little dramatic tension, and the paragraphs are monotonous. I think that if the writer had developed scenes to tell the story, as opposed to telling most of it in narrative, the book would be more interesting.