Perfect Harmony [Hardcover]

Barbara Wood (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1998

In her latest novel, internationally bestselling author Barbara Wood ventures into the world of American technology and alternative healing. When three people turn up dead after taking an ancient Chinese herbal remedy, healer Charlotte Lee suddenly finds herself in a race to find some answers before more people die Print ads .

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Charlotte Lee's yin and yang are in precarious balance. Nearing 40, the heroine of this New Age thriller is torn between East and West. While proud of Harmony House, the Palm Springs herbal company she inherited from her grandmother, Perfect Harmony, she pines for the Britisher who was the love of her youth. Lee's yearnings come to a head when three deaths are attributed to herbal remedies made by Harmony House?and specifically to her. Who is trying to destroy her? The finger of suspicion points variously to her cousin, her family lawyer, an FDA agent and a psychic. Then old love Jonathan Sutherland, a hacker-turned-fed, shows up to save the day, and Charlotte's emotional balance is further imperiled. The flashback sections of the novel featuring the strong first-person voice of Perfect Harmony alternate with a perfunctory third-person narrative, and Wood's (The Dreaming) novel seems to mirror the split in Charlotte's own psyche: turn-of-the-century scenes of Singapore and San Francisco's Chinatown are sharply realized. Zoom in on the individuals in the mosaic, however, and the picture blurs. Although herbology and Chinese customers are beautifully detailed, descriptions of gee-whiz computer technology should have been cut to the bone. Ultimately, the Gordian knot of Charlotte's self is far more compelling to untangle than the mystery plot.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Someone is putting deadly poison in the herbal remedies manufactured by Charlotte Lee's booming biotech company, and she ends up on the Internet to discover who. From the best-selling author of The Prophetess (LJ 5/15/96).
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 429 pages
• Publisher: Little Brown & Co (T); 1st edition (March 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316816531
• ISBN-13: 978-0316816533
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,561,734 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Electrifying! A timeless tale that can satisfy any taste!, July 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Perfect Harmony (Mass Market Paperback)

Barbara Wood has written a treasure of literature. I adored the Prophetess and Perfect Harmony was a tanatmount to the splendor of the former. Charlotte Lee's pharmaceutical company is in peril. A saboteur has poisoned some remedies and therefore destroyed her name and the reputation of her company and asks her to give a press conference confessing that she tainted the medicine in 12 hours. But these 12 hours aren't just a wait. She discovers the secrets forever hidden under the dusty patina of time waiting to be unearthed. Barbara Wood takes us on a timeless and unforgettable ride through 4 generations of Chinese women uncovering secrets and mysteries of a lost land of ancient traditions and mysticism called Singapore and a modern world of pragmatism, skullduggery, technology, and power we know as America. Charlotte spans the continents and returns to the legacy of her ancestors, a wisdom more valuable than her life and older than her years, as she fights against a nemesis locked in cyberspace and another more important enemy, the memories of her past. The past that will save her. A must-read for anyone.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a very good read, January 29, 2001

By 

Tina Morris "schultheiss" (Rockville, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Perfect Harmony (Mass Market Paperback)

One of the things that puts Barbara Wood into a class of her own in historic, adventure and now also in biotech thriller writing: her thorough background research. She puts a lot of work into creating a complex and rich historical as well as atmospheric background for her lead characters. And she does it quite well for characters from foreign cultural background: the main character in "Perfect Harmony" is Charlotte Lee, a young Chinese-American woman. She is the CEO of Harmony Biotech, a biopharmaceutical company specializing in Chinese herbal medicine. As dramatic events unfold in present time and Charlotte sees her company, her professional existence and her life threatened, Wood unfolds the story of Charlotte's family and the history of the company in an equally engaging parallel storyline, and drama picks up on the mystery as well as the romantic level. Barbara Wood is the master of generation-spanning scenarios and great family sagas, as she has demonstrated before in her Egyptian tale "Virgins of Paradise" and the Australian saga "Dreamtime". Even when her sometimes a bit overly dramatic and predictably romantic heroines every once in a while come across as old-fashioned, this does not compromise the overall quality of her storytelling. Wood is a wonderful storyteller and is performing at her best in "Perfect Harmony". Pick it up, kick off your shoes and don't plan anything else for the weekend.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another Wood Winner, September 9, 2001

By 

BeachReader (Delaware) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Perfect Harmony (Mass Market Paperback)

This is the fast-paced story of Charlotte Lee, CEO of an herbal pharmaceutical company in California, involved not only in alternative medicine but in research for a cure for cancer. The action goes back and forth in time and place, tracing Charlotte's ancestors, Mei-Ling and Perfect Harmony, her grandmother who started the company when she arrived from Singapore as a 16 year old.

Wood peels back the layers of the stories in a way that kept me involved even though I usually am not too fond of flashbacks.

There were,however, a few improbable scenes and I thought the book could have been less dramatic in places.

Wood's books are always good reading, and it is evident that she does an amazing amount of research. Many of her books have a medical theme, usually non-conventional medicine. My favorite of her books was "Green City in the Sun", which was about Kenya - a wonderful story that gave me a lot of insight into this country. Another excellent one was "Virgins of Paradise", about Egyptian women and the family structure there. I even listened to the audio after reading the book. Both were packed full of interesting information that gave insight into how people in these places live.