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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
solid horror tale, December 31, 2003
This review is from: Something Deadly (Mira) (Mass Market Paperback)
Veterinarian Markie Cross loves her living and working on the US Caribbean Island Territory of San Martin. Her dog Kato begins acting strange and many of the canines bark as if they are warning their owners to beware of something evil. Kato makes Markie take him out for a walk and stops at the house of a neighbor Carter Shippey. The healthy man suddenly died, but medical examiner Dr. Declan Quinn finds something strange with the corpse when he examines it. The man's bones dissolved turning to jelly. Not long afterward, his healthy wife succumbs too. CDC is called in as biohazard level 4 is provoked quarantining the island. No one knows what could have caused the deaths that defy logic. Others die too with only the dogs seemingly aware of what is going on. Soon Kato and Markie connect on some mystical level that allows them to mentally communicate and the human falls in love with her other male companion Declan, but will those be enough to stop a murderess released from beyond the grave. This tale is more a classic style horror tale, but contains medical thriller and romantic suspense elements that enhance the plot. The story line smoothly changes from a medical enigma into from the grave killer tale. Though the Kato-Markie connection adds a fascinating fantasy element that seems over the edge, readers will find SOMETHING DEADLY an interesting thriller. Harriet Klausner
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Kato to the rescue!, October 14, 2008
This review is from: Something Deadly (Mira) (Mass Market Paperback)
This is a rather routine potboiler that dabbles in several genres without really settling on a particular one; it's got romance, suspense, police procedural, medical melodrama, forensics, historical fiction, political intrigue, travelog, restaurant reviews, and most of all, 'Kato the Wonder Wolf', a supporting character who steals the show from his four-legged co-stars! The plot itself meanders along the island, which seems to change its name as if by voodoo magic, from 'San Martin' to 'Santz Martina'(The ghost of Annie must have possessed the proofreader!).
After a promising start, Lee takes the book squarely into supernatural territory, and things get a bit bogged down in a backstory that was probably supposed to evoke Stephen King, but reads more like a rejected 'Scooby Doo' episode.
The working relationship between Markie and Dec proceeds nicely, yet it all seems predictable. Dec's backstory and motivations were well-developed, but Markie's 'abilities' aren't, beyond having an unusual friendship with Kato.
The dog is the best thing about the story, especially when Lee writes several paragraphs from his point of view. She does the same on occasion with other animals,but uses rather stilted 'animal speak' on one occasion.
'Something Deadly' was something more than I expected, and her interest in/love for animals is plain to see, but I'm not sure I'm sold on her ability to make the human characters interesting.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A barkingly good read, November 7, 2006
This review is from: Something Deadly (Mira) (Mass Market Paperback)
Part supernatural, part thriller, pure mystery, this story is set among the wealthy residents who live on a fictional Caribbean island.
People are suddenly dying; an almost unseen force shreds the life out of several San Martin citizens, leaving their bodies looking like they have been liquefied. At first some sort of Ebola like virus is suspected and one of the island's medical examiner's Declan Quinn fears the worst, but at first he looks for a human cause for the deaths, what he does not know in the beginning is that that the answer to his questions lie not with the humans on the island but with its dogs who have the ability to sense evil when it wafts their way.
Kato is a wolf-husky hybrid owned by the island vet, Markie Cross. More wolf than dog, he and all his other canine brethren on the island sense what the locals have known for a very long time but have chosen to try and forget; The notorious Annie Black, who has been dead for the some 200 years, has returned and she is determined to make up for lost time.
Greedy gold hunters have unwittingly bought Annie back into the human world by daring to search for her treasure, which just happens to be buried on Markie's land.
Only Declan and the Island dogs have a chance of defeating Annie, but in order to do so Declan must take Markie to the very edge of death and hope and pray that he can bring her back before it is too late...
An atmospheric read that is a real page turner, I especially like the spiritual element that the author gives to Kato and the other dogs; it is obvious she has a passion for all things canine.
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