Tabula Rasa (Hardcover)

by Shelly Reuben (Author) "NOT ALL BABIES are created equal..." (more)
Key Phrases: green scrapbook, blue scrapbook, pointe shoes, Edith Tuttle, Red Cross, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Reuben's fifth novel (after 2004's Weeping), a poignant crime drama, introduces Billy Nightingale, a vigilant fire investigator, who rescues "Baby Tuttle," the tiny survivor of an act of arson and multiple homicide. Billy later uncovers incriminating evidence that leads to the conviction and incarceration of the unnamed baby's mother, Edith Tuttle, who has used fire to cover the murders of seven children over an 18-year period. After Edith loses her parental rights, Billy's older sister, Annie, and her husband, state trooper Sebastian Bly, adopt the child and name her Meredith "Merry" Marmalade Bly. Reuben, herself a veteran fire investigator, skillfully depicts the arson investigation and portrays the warm Blys with an almost fairytale-like sweetness countered by Edith's hauntingly cold persona. The family's struggle to protect Merry from learning her true identity goes up in flames when Edith is released and goes in search of the last witness to her depravity. In a flashback, a character teaching a young Billy about fire investigation says, "The problem with this fire is the ignition source," and the book's hot resolution confirms that a human ignition source is the most frightening.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–Meredith Marmalade Bly lives a charmed life in upstate New York with her doting parents until a school project requires her to research her family tree. Suddenly, Annie and Sebastian Bly and her Uncle Billy, a New York City firefighter, are thrown into a perilous situation where they must lie to protect her. As an infant, she was found by Billy in the charred ruins of a house fire that killed her brother and sister. During the investigation, it was discovered that Meredith's biological mother, Edith Tuttle, had murdered six of her children in four separate house fires. After reading about a rash of teen suicides, and unwilling to wreak further emotional havoc on Meredith's life, the three adults decide to create a name and a past for the girl's mother. They find a name on a tombstone and make her a gifted ballerina born in Russia who defected to the West during the Cold War. This news has the predicted and hoped-for effect on Meredith when she becomes a talented dancer. Life for the Blys continues to be blessed until Edith gets out of jail. This exciting suspense story, similar in style to Mary Higgins Clark's early novels, will grab teens from its intriguing beginning and keep them reading until its rather predictable conclusion.–Pat Bender, The Shipley School, Bryn Mawr, PA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt; 1 edition (August 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 015101079X
• ISBN-13: 978-0151010790
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #953,351 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fire!, August 10, 2005

By	Titlesinc "Florence Shay, mystery reader" (Highland Park, IL) - See all my reviews

I loved it. Loved the tone. So entertaining! Such fun! And it's a horror story besides with a truly frightening person lurking. Very engaging story with people you will love. Written by an honest-to-goodness Private Eye who specializes in arson, so the theme is Fire, and while you are enjoying the story, you'll learn a lot about fires too.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars New heights of story telling, July 22, 2005

By	Selma R. Holo "Selma Holo" (Los Angeles, California) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

When I began to read Tabula Rasa I expected another one of Shelly Reuben's great fire procedurals. That would have been enough to please me. This new book, though, is both as good as her previous thrillers and, frankly, much better--even more of a page turner. Her devoted readers will love it because Shelly Reuben continues to give us new things to learn about arson. But she will get a whole raft of new readers who will appreciate her fabulous new intriguing characters. The stunning Annie brings you into her sophisticated but also earthy orbit. Merry is gorgeous, difficult, and captivating. Her husband and brother, fireman and cop respectively, are characters the reader wants more of (and I hear that there will be a sequel to this book--I am really excited). Shelly's use of the Red Cross is ingenious as a device for revealing clues to this mystery. Mystery, yes! But more than a mystery at the same time. Shelly Reuben has written a gripping novel. A must-read.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars (3.5) Fighting fire with fire..., July 16, 2005

By	Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The baby who lives in the ugly house in the village of Sojourn has dark, staring eyes, but never smiles, only watches. Her mother often speculates that the infant is a changeling. In the hospital, Edith fills out the birth certificate as "Baby Tuttle", promising to give her child a lovely name later. But she never does.

Billy Nightingale comes to firefighting through his avid curiosity and inventiveness, fascinated by the antiquated pumps of the Fire Department in his home town of Elk Mountain, Wyoming. Later, in New York City, Billy lives his dream, becoming a fire marshal, close friends with his brother-in-law, state trooper Sebastian Bly. Nightingale and Bly arrive at the scene of a terrible fire, where two children are lost to the flames, the mother comforted by a neighbor. Edith Tuttle fails to mention a third child to the police. Spooked by the malevolent aura of the fire-ravaged house, Nightingale searches randomly, sure he is missing something. He discovers a terrified, but silent, baby under the foundation of the house, where she has crawled for safety.

Something is terribly wrong at the scene of this fire. Billy's sister, Annie, and her husband, Sebastian, work closely with children's services to adopt the baby, whom they name Meredith, her mother permanently out of the picture. The next few years pass quietly, Merry a contented child. But when Merry inquires about her birth mother, the Bly's are challenged to protect their daughter from a history that could scar her future, their only concern to give this child the bright prospects she so richly deserves. This innocent that came to them from a house of death has known a life free of chaos, stimulated by a loving environment, her career as a professional ballerina already on track. Merry inadvertently sets in motion a chain of events that will threaten her and her adoptive family years later.

Reuben's characters are energetic, their personalities well-defined. The writing crackles with energy and an appreciation of the subtleties of fires, the methods of arson and the clues that help investigators identify causes. Besides the relevant information about arson investigation, a search for adoptive parents and the intricacies of a dancer's life, the novel also deals with the emotional aspects of adoption, especially when a child is driven to find her birth parents. In Tabula Rasa, the happy family circle is shattered by a child's obsessive quest for identity and the dark forces that search unleashes. The author's personal expertise is extensive and evident in the novel, adding interest and believability, a fascinating foray into an area rarely experienced by most. Tabula Rasa suggests that a blank slate can be written on any number of ways, DNA directed toward success instead of failure, with the aid of a loving family. Luan Gaines/2005.