Quaker Indictment [Hardcover]

Irene Allen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1998

When Elizabeth Elliot visits her dearest friend Reba Nichols, she expects a relaxing vacation. Instead Reba disappears without a trace soon after Elizabeth's arrival. Elizabeth teams up with Meghan, a brash young doctor, to investigate and is horrified to discover that Reba has been murdered. After Meghan's car is vandalized and her house burned down, the pair realize that their lives are in grave danger .

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

To Brother Cadfael and Father Brown, add Elizabeth Elliot to the ranks of amateur sleuths with God on their side. Elliot, the creation of author Irene Allen, is an elderly woman with devout Quaker beliefs. In Quaker Indictment, the fourth in the series, Elizabeth leaves her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to visit an old college friend in Seattle--and to help her gather evidence proving that a nuclear facility in the area is leeching radioactive material into the land. When her friend ends up murdered, Elliot joins forces with a mutual acquaintance to solve the mystery, but soon finds herself up against a government agency run amok. Despite murder, arson, and close calls galore, Elizabeth Elliot's strong faith carries her through to the satisfying denouement.

From Kirkus Reviews

A fourth episode in this series of low-keyed mysteries starring Elizabeth Elliot, an elderly Quaker widow from Cambridge, Mass. (Quaker Testimony, 1996, etc.). Here, Elizabeth has flown to Seattle to meet Reba Nichols, her lifelong friend from college days. The two are staying at the house of Reba's deceased parents in Richland, on land bordering the old Hanford nuclear site, which produced plutonium during WW II and still employs some locals. Reba is reluctant to sell her inherited property, convinced that people in the area are suffering from radioactive poisoning. She plans to take soil and water samples for expert analysis before confronting government authorities. With the help of Elizabeth, Reba gathers her samples, moving at one point onto the Hanford sitewhere she's stopped by security guards and taken away in a jeep. Elizabeth drives back to the town, expecting to meet Reba there after her release. Instead, her friend's body is found shot to death outside her house, and Al Cartwright, one of the guards, denies ever seeing her. Elizabeth gets little assistance from Sheriff Tomlinson but strong support from Reba's young friend Dr. Meghan Zillainas determined as Elizabeth is to find Reba's killer . . . a mission finally accomplished with a little help from Meghan's trusty dog Panda. A straightforward look at a hardscrabble community with a real-life problem, its momentum slowed by Elizabeth's preachy musings and a flabby, not-so-convincing solution. Still, mildly entertaining. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 241 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr; 1st edition (February 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312169701
• ISBN-13: 978-0312169701
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,033,052 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Missing Friends, December 10, 2001

By 

Emily Schnabl (St. Louis, MO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Quaker Indictment (Quaker Sojourn) (Mass Market Paperback)

I have previously enjoyed Irene Allen's Elizabeth Elliot novels, especially as she has revealed the rich community setting of a Quaker meeting and the inner spiritual life of her protagonist Friend. I was tremendously disappointed in this book. Allen removes Elliot from her natural location, and, as Elliot spends the novel commenting on her dislocation, so the reader feels dislocated as well, with no reward. The circle of Friends whom Elliot relies on is gone, and the characters and suspects she encounters here are not developed enough for us to care. The reader is told much but shared with not at all. I hope if Allen continues to write this series that she returns Elliot to her home in Cambridge and novels that are more fully developed.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A great disappointment, March 26, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Quaker Indictment (Hardcover)

I really loved all three of the previous books in this series. I am not a Quaker, nor even a Christian, but I was deeply interested in Elizabeth Elliot and her spiritual journey, which complemented in a very suitable way the mystery story in each book.

I had some difficulty in believing that the same author had written this book. It was preachy, unfocussed, digressive and completely unsatisfying, all things the previous ones were not. I have much sympathy with the political position the author takes in this book, but it's a d**n poor mystery story, and not even a good political rant, as each gets in the way of the other. Distressing.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Ageism Reigns!, November 11, 2006

By 

Susan F. Rakoczy "Susan Rakoczy" (Hilton, South Africa) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Quaker Indictment (Quaker Sojourn) (Mass Market Paperback)

I read a previous Allen Quaker mystery, "Quaker Witness", and enjoyed it though I found her repeated reference's to Elizabeth Elliot's age annoying. "Quaker Indictment"'s ageism is much worse. The two main characters met in college 40 years ago--therefore they are in their early 60s. Yet Allen repeatedly calls Elliot "the old Quaker". In the library copy I read, a previous reader circled some of the "old Quaker" references and why, "Why is 60 old?". Indeed, Ms. Allen, why do you characterize her as "old" so often? How old are you? Perhaps to you 60 seems the apex of decripitude. But the incoming Speaker of the House is 66; would Allen call Nancy Pelosi "an old Speaker"? I chide Allen's editor for not recognizing the ageism and correcting it. The story as a whole is not well done and the characters do not develop. It hardly deserves one star.