Customer Reviews

Seven Minutes to Noon

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This mass market paperback looks no more remarkable than the hundreds of others on the shelves at your local bookstore. But in this case, looks can be deceiving. Go ahead and pick it up. You won't be able to put it down.

In the prologue, a young girl sees a fairy floating in the murky canal that runs through the town. But of course, the reader knows that it's a really a dead body. This gives the reader a sense of omniscience about the outcome of the missing woman. Sometimes this ruins the fun in a mystery, but Kate Pepper creates such believable, interesting characters that you just keep hoping that you're wrong.

The story is told primarily through the eyes of Alice Halpern, a happily married woman with two children who is now expecting twins. It is her pregnant friend, Lauren, who is missing. Alice and Lauren are just part of a very close circle of friends who enjoy backyard barbecues and play dates with the kids. When Lauren disappears, the suspicion eventually falls on a very powerful person who may have a reason to want to make Alice and her unborn children disappear, too.

The police take a very keen interest in this case and a female detective is available to Alice at all times of the day and night. Since this story takes place in Brooklyn, New York, I found this to be a rather questionable phenomenon. But this book has such engrossing plotlines that I was willing to forgive a little uncharacteristic behavior.

This would be a fantastic book to take someplace where you have a long, boring wait. The time will just fly by.

This mystery suspense thriller is one of the best I've ever read. I could not and did not set this book aside until I'd finished it! Through Pepper's skill, reality becomes far scarier than supernatural hauntings could ever be.

Alice Halpern, Lauren Barnet, and Maggie Blue are close friends, closer than sisters. They live in a cozy Brooklyn neighborhood of tidy brownstones, shade trees, flower gardens and well kept parks. Folks can walk from place to place, visiting small businesses and eateries without fear. Alice and

Lauren are both pregnant and excited about the prospect, moreso because the experience is shared by friends. Alice and Maggie co-own an upscale shoe store. Life is good, until a horror none of them could possibly imagine wrecks their comfortable world.

When Lauren fails to meet Alice in the park or pick up her son from school, Maggie and Alice are excited. They just know Lauren has gone into labor. Excitement soon gives way to dread when Lauren can't be found in area hospitals. One day passes, then two and three with no word from their friend. Where could an almost nine month pregnant woman be? Maggie and

Alice are on hand when Lauren's decomposing body is pulled from a nearby canal. Her baby has been surgically removed through an amateurish incision in Lauren's abdomen. The sight of her friend's dead body and the missing baby haunts Alice. Who would kill a mother in plain sight and take her baby? And why?

Alice imagines a seedy stranger is following her. She fears for her unborn twins. That fear is shared by detectives with the Brooklyn Police Department because Lauren is not the first pregnant woman to die in such a way. Clues are few and far between. Soon no one is safe from harm, not even Alice's realtor, as a vicious killer stalks them all. The truth, once

fully revealed, gave me chills and made my hair stand on end.

The truest horrors are those that invade our secure worlds. Kate Pepper did an amazing job of invading mine with Seven Minutes to Noon. This story is one I won't forget. For lovers of the genre, or readers who crave exemplary writing, it's highly recommended.

This book is like a car accident that you pass on the road. You want to hurry yourself along to be able to see what happened, and even though you know it's going to be bad, you can't stop your curiosity. The story is about three women friends in NYC who live and work together, intermingling their husbands and kids in a cozy tableau of life. Two of the women, the narrator Alice, and her friend Lauren, are pregnant. When Lauren goes missing on her way to a Pilates class in the 9th month of her pregnancy, you know she didn't just hit her head and suffer amnesia. The harrowing journey into the unknown, the fear of losing a friend who is more like a sister, and the grief that comes when her body is found, resonates strongly in this story. Even though the plot is one that is fairly transparent, what surprised me about this story was the beautiful way with words this author has. She has the ability to deftly draw parallels with lovely word choices, so much so that I almost find myself holding my breath until the next great image comes into focus. A solid book that I enjoyed very much. I'll go back and read this author's first book, and eagerly await her third book!

After such a great buildup,I began feeling totally lost due to way too many characters in the final chapters. It became not only totally distracting and frustrating but all the suspense accomplished to that point was getting lost.

Alice's life was so congested with constant interaction with friends and police by the end I never really felt she was in any danger..

This is my second book by Kate. It was not a disappointment. I couldn't read it fast enough. It was a page turner and very entertaining. Now I will read her last two books. She is a talented writer in my opinion and hope she keeps up the great writing.

A new fan

Rather slow & labored plot to give you the feeling like the protagonist, Alice who is heavily pregnant, carrying twins in her tummy. Quite a banal plot that did not build up to a climax, fell rather flat. It started promisingly where you think it could be one of those hold your attention till the end but degenerated to one of domestic details rather than a murder inquiry.

Gaping holes in plot like father & son who went abroad were not thoroughly investigated by the police when father deposited son back home. Police could have gone thru immigration procedures to check on which flight they had returned to follow up on clues. Also the build up of an earlier murder victim, Christine, with similar characteristics was no where in sight when Lauren's murder was solved. Even bigger gaping holes here!

The ending may not satisfy some readers as there are loose threads hanging.

This is a different genre for me to read and I picked it up quite by accident. But I could not put this book down until it was finished. It went with me everywhere I had to go just in case I got a couple of minutes to read. I will be eagerly checking for any new Kate Pepper books in the future!

Gripping story; great suspense. As good as her first one. Some of the plot was a little unbelievable,,hard to believe that the police would share so much information with a civilian, and even harder to believe that they would use a 6 month pregant woman with a wire to confront a possible suspect!! But sort of just suspend disbelief and go along for the ride. Await her next one eagerly.

I picked up Kate Pepper's "Seven Minutes To Noon," curious to see if she was able to capture the urban Brooklyn setting I am so familiar with as a New Yorker. She does indeed succeed in bringing the area vividly to life - Carroll Park, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill with its green and leafy brownstone-lined streets and upscale shops, the results of many gentrification projects which have sent real estate prices soaring. The book would be near perfect if Ms. Pepper's suspense thriller storyline mirrored her flair for descriptive writing. Unfortunately, it does not. Her writing is laborious and the pace plods. The conclusion is weak, not very credible at all, and threads are left dangling. Truthfully, beach reads like this one are a dime a dozen on today's market. (This is not a derogatory statement about light fiction. I am talking about quality and being a selective reader). This novel is mediocre, at best. From her descriptive style, character development, knowledge of children and the ability to capture their antics on the printed page, I think Kate Pepper is talented enough to improve her storytelling, tighten up her narrative, pick up her pace considerably and come up with a winner. This one is definitely not!

The plot basics concern Alice Halpern, homemaker, shoe store co-owner, mother of young Peter and Nell, wife to Mike, and pregnant with twins on the way. She waits to have coffee with friend Lauren, also pregnant, in her last month. They planned to meet in Carroll Park today and then pick up their children from school together. Lauren doesn't show. And when she finally does, she is a corpse, the baby torn from her womb and missing. Later the police mention to Alice that her friend is not the first pregnant woman to go missing in the neighborhood. As the story progresses, Alice begins to fear for herself and her unborn babies. As she approaches her ninth month she senses that she is being stalked. As her previously safe middle class existence turns into a world of nightmares, keeping the twins safe becomes her overwhelming priority.

I think the audience for this type of "domestic" mystery is limited to women, since much of the narrative not dealing with crime is devoted to pregnancy, birth, child rearing, women's friendships and midlife crises, etc.. I really cannot recommend "Seven Minutes To Noon," but will take a look at Kate Pepper's next novel when it hits the shelves. I wish her good luck!

JANA

I bought this book because I grew up in Brooklyn and thought the author did a terrific job of getting the locale and the residents down right. However, the writing was laborious to me, all the different/relationships. It ook forever to get "into" the action, even if you knew what was coming. I was so tired in Part I that I skipped Pt. 2 and moved right into Pts. 3&4 ands never missed the plot. I think the ending was interesting, although convoluted. Pepper seems to be overreaching is putting out her story. Maybe she should stay in Cobble Hill and just write a period piece or a morality fable about the yuppies. Stright out that would work on its own.