Saturday, February 19, 2011

2011 book 49

Elizabeth Stuckey-French's The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady
Before I got my copy of this, I spent a while trying to figure out why the author's name was so familiar. When it came, I saw that it was set in Tallahassee, and realized the author works in one of the departments I worked with at my former place of work. So, there's that. Anyway, this is about a woman who, when she was pregnant back in the 50s, was unwittingly given radiation as part of a scientific study. After her small daughter died of cancer, she blamed the doctor in charge--and now, as an old woman, is coming to get her revenge. But her ill-conceived plans of killing him start to backfire when she gets entangled with his family. Stuckey-French does a great job of bringing the characters to life--especially the dr's youngest granddaughter Suzi--and her writing is solid, but the story doesn't entirely make sense (in light of the ending, the first chapter from Suzi's POV is really weird) and while the ending is clearly designed to be satisfying, I didn't think it worked that well. B/B-.

A review copy was provided by the publisher.

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