Siren's Lullaby [Hardcover]

William Kennedy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1997

When Robert Cramm and his crew die in a yachting accident, his wife is overcome with grief, but a mysterious phone call and her discovery that the family company is nearly bankrupt make Cheryl suspicious that the explosion may have been a hoax.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

In his latest sea-based thriller, Kennedy (Dark Tide, LJ 3/1/95) spins an intricate tale that falls flat at the end. Robert Cramm of Cramm Yachts seeks to boost lagging sales by winning the Fort Lauderdale- to-Bermuda yacht race with Siren, a boat of radical design, while crewing with wife Cheryl, newly recovered from severe depression after daughter Rachael was born. At the last minute Beth Hardaway, a skilled sailor recently close to Robert, fills in for Cheryl, and Siren takes a dominating lead in the race before vanishing at sea. Beth's body and debris are recovered, and investigation reveals Beth's pregnancy, possible sabotage by a rival company hoping to buy Cramm, embezzlement at Cramm, and the love of Rachael's au pair for Robert. Kennedy's scenes at sea are full of life, but his plot is short on character development, and, despite frequent rumination about who did what when, some plotlines are not resolved. Recommended only for devoted Kennedy fans and the yachting crowd.?Michele Leber, Fairfax Cty. P.L., Va.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

After his well-received lifeboat saga Dark Tide (1994), whoduniteer Kennedy offers another salty tale of yachting mayhem and misadventure, this time set mostly on land, in Bermuda and around the office of a New England hi-tech boutique yachtmaker. Romantically rugged Robert Cramm's boatbuilding business is on the skids, and, even if winning a prestigious Bermuda yacht race won't save the company from short orders and leaky finances, Cramm just has to accept the challenge. His newest yacht, Siren, sporting a risky top-heavy hull, was designed by brooding genius Sean Patton, whose previous competition-boat sank ingloriously. Cramm's best friend and partner, George Williamson, wants to sell the business to a souless, but successful, competitor, Vector, owned by the shadowy Philip McKnight. Meanwhile, Cramm's wife, Cheryl, is all set to crew with her husband on the most important race of his life when their precocious child, Rachel, falls sick. Cheryl gets a flash of separation-anxiety and bows out of the race, leaving Beth Hardway, Cramm's alleged mistress and a reasonably good sailor (even if she did accidentally kill one of her crew in an earlier race) to fill Cheryl's Top-Siders. But Siren never reaches the finish line: Some shattered wreckage and Beth's charred, three- months pregnant corpse are fished out of the Bermuda Triangle. Later, Cheryl gets a creepy phone call hinting that her husband may have faked his death; the family's au pair acts weird; and then this potboiler version of Robert Stone's Outerbridge Reach swiftly runs aground. Woman-in-peril plot tricks abound as Cheryl, whose anxieties are passed off as the result of too many secretly drugged drinks, mistakes good guy Sean Patton for the villain, frets about her daughter, and conveniently blunders into a Fiberglas-crunching finish. A briskly told, somewhat placeless Clue-game melodrama with nautical flourishes and a few Crichtonesque fun facts about the boatbuilding biz. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (May 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312156588
• ISBN-13: 978-0312156589
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,615,805 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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