When 19-year-old Phoebe Desmond finds out she's pregnant--and is subsequently dumped by Tyrus, the middle-aged "emotionally disturbed" father of the child--she travels to Paris to have her baby in the company of a friend, Marlys Hightower. During her six-month stay in France, Phoebe falls in love with Ben Reuben (a rich artist friend of Marlys' who lets Phoebe board with him), and she exposes some shocking secrets along the way.

It's been years since I've read this book (sometime during my junior or senior year of high school), but this is still one of my favorite books. Phoebe's first person narrative and wit is wickedly amusing and honest. If you like adult books by Judy Blume, then you might like "The Book of Phoebe." Highly recommended.

Goodbye, tongue-tied! hello saucy! I just memorized all the great lines from this way too much fun book, and now I can mow them down at parties when the talk turns snappy. I only wish Phoebe had come into my life sooner! I can't wait for the author's next book!

The Book of Phoebe is one of those books that you h ate to see end. Phoebe Desmond is a heroine who is both irreverent and spiritual in the best sense of both words. When Phoebe finds she's pregnant as the result of her first love affair, she takes off for Paris determined to have her baby without having to tell the baby's father that he is a father. In Phoebe's opinion he doesn't deserve to know. While she thinks of Paris as an escape, it turns out to be more of a learning experience than Yale ever was , teaching her more about herself than she sometimes wanted to know. She's funny, gutsy, courageous and all those good things you want the people you read about to be. This is a story that begins with a girl coming to grips with some major events in her life, events, which might have traumatized someone else. What they did for Phoebe was turn her from a girl I liked very much, into a woman I liked even more. The writing is first rate, the laughs and the tears nicely interspersed. It's the kind of book that makes you feel a lot better for having read it.

Let me mention upfront that I live on Block Island. Not a native, but I moved here and live on the Island year round. I got the book because of the nature of it's setting, not the storyline or the author.
I found the book slow without a "hook" to keep my interest. The storyline is unimaginative. The "real" story, it seems, is the Island and island live and characters. To that end the author goes to great pains to write as if she actually knew anything about the island. However, beyond some topographical knowledge, she has none. Indeed, she completely distorts the live and people here. To be sure, we actually have a complete police department, Police Chief and all. Moreover they do live in nice homes, not broken down lean-tos. As for the "rich" natives riding in customized, fancy cars, I have never seen a single one. These are just a few examples of many.
Now don't get me wrong, I believe very much in "poetic license" but not under the cloak of personal, intimate knowledge of a place and people. Clearly, as the previous reviews show, the author dupes readers with her alleged knowledge when in reality there is none. In an interview to our local paper she explained this complete lack of local knowledge and distortion by calling her work "fiction". I would accept her rational, had she desribed a "fictional" place. Instead the author has gone through all her pains of picking a real place, seemingly describing this real place and people who live here.
So - if you like slow, unimaginative stories about a real location distorted by ignorance, this one's for you.

Block Island is the perfect place for FBI agent Poppy Rice to recuperate--along with her lover, ATF agent Joe Barnow. Admittedly, the law on Block Island is comprised of one aging Constable and an alcoholic state trooper, but that's all right. There was never any crime on Block Island. At least there wasn't until Poppy almost runs over the body of an overweight teenage girl twisted and tortured in death.

A con man has opened a camp for overweight girls on Block Island and someone is targetting the girls. Joe goes into retreat, unwilling to accept the possibility that his island harbors a serpent in its heart, so it's up to Poppy, along with alcoholic Fitzy, to get to the bottom of the case. Bumbling officials in Rhode Island and in the Center for Disease Control end up making things more difficult for Poppy.

Author Mary-Ann Tirone Smith writes a compelling page turner. Her descriptions of the people of this north-eastern island are convincing and three-dimensional. Poppy is sympathetic and smart, without being superwoman. I especially enjoyed the character of Fitzy--a hugely damaged individual who battles himself and his own fears.

DC based FBI Agent Poppy Rice and her boyfriend ATF Field Advisor Joe Barnow go on a "required" vacation on Block Island, Rhode Island after her harrowing war in Texas (see LOVE HER MADLY). While riding a bike, Poppy finds the corpse of a teen.

Poppy performs her civil duty by calling the police. A local physician concludes that the female victim died from using bad drugs, but an autopsy proves Dana was clean plus there were external injuries on the body. Three days later, a second teen is found dead. The two share in common attendance at Camp Guinevere, a camp for the obese. Police Officer Francis X. Fitzgerald investigates the homicides, but Poppy finds him and the "medical examiner lacking as the former spends most of his time drinking and the latter under the influence of a prescription drug. Thus Poppy does what she does best, conducting her own inquiries as to whom killed the two overweight farm campers even as the island is quarantined due to a reported plague epidemic.

In her second engagement Poppy Rice remains a wonderful law enforcement investigator who cannot resist involvement even when it could cost her life. The "dual" investigations (local vs. Poppy) are fun to compare as one seems indifferently amateurish while the other passionately professionalism. Joe enables the reader to see the feminine side Of Poppy while the islanders add quirky amusing peculiarities to an enjoyable tale that means forty-eight states and several territories to go.

Harriet Klausner

The most unique aspect of "An American Killing" lies in the writing. Taking a solid but somewhat common plot, Smith adds a layer of observation and interpretation to make for a rich and thoughtfully paced suspense read. For example, Smith spends what seems, at first, to be an inordinate amount of time describing the declining mill town of New Caxton, Rhode Island. However, as the book progresses, many of the clues to the triple murder lie precisely in what is normal and what was abnormal in the minute details of everyday life in New Caxton.

Denise Burke, the narrator/true crime novelist, is very different from Nancy Prichard's new protagonist, Marie Lightfoot. Denise is an interesting and rich personality - not just because she shoots the bull with Hilary Clinton. The book is full of her inner thoughts which are processed in a most female style. Male readers need to be prepared for some very "Venus" type thinking.

The book missing a fifth star for a couple of reasons. First, the book starts with the murder of the Congressman, then spends 90% of the book in a relatively linear narrative of events preceeding the murder, and then has a brief post murder wrap-up. Since the real mystery isn't the murder of the Congressman but rather the triple murder, why confuse the issue. Also, while I enjoyed the asides about the Clintons, I think the marketers do the potential readers a disservice. Bill and Hilary have nothing to do with the core of the story.

Bottom-line: A nicely written mystery that takes time to think and observe. The pacing may be too slow for some readers.

"An American Killing" is for those who look for well-written beach books. Even though I don't read much fiction, I kept reading this crime novel to the end. Mary-Ann Tirone Smith has written a well-designed, well-researched story that broaches a few issues beyond the who-dunnit genre, namely crime theory, motherhood, politics, postmodernist philosophy, an insider's look at publishing, and--most intriguing--a study of the marriage of a woman who behaves with a man's independence. The heroine, a bestselling author who specializes in novelizing true murders, has as much bluster and vigor as any male detective. She's trained her teenaged children to do without her, and her husband, too. She leaves without permission, contacts them only when convenient, and offers them no guilt, no explanations, no lengthy telephone communications. Smith's best writing--of writing that is excellent throughout--details her forays alone to the family's Rhode Island beach cottage, and the dog, Buddy, that keeps her company. She also describes a dying industrial town and its unfortunate residents, a prison interview, an author's personal day in New York City, and the writer's life in Washington, DC, as though she's been there. She has a strange habit of not providing physical descriptions of the men in this story. And the sex is, well, perhaps an editor's suggestion; she skates over it like an embarrassment. But I like the relationships she describes. You see yourself in these scenes; she hits you in places you'll recognize. It's unusual for a private investigator to fall in love with the chief murder suspect, but this works. The effectiveness of Tirone Smith's story rests on unexpectedness. I quibble with the ending, which has the strong smell of change by an editor. This would have been a more powerful story if Tirone Smith had kept the ending I think she was leading us to: a better understanding of crimes of domestic violence, and the knowledge that we know least those we love best--Linda Donelson, author of "Out of Isak Dinesen: Karen Blixen's untold story"

I found this to be a fabulous read. The characters, especially the protagonist, were well-developed and believable. There were so many surprises and twists during the second-half of the book that I was reading with my mouth open. The women are the stronger characters for a nice change. I will definitely be looking for more from this author.

I heard the author discussing this book on a local radio station recently. I'd never heard of her, but found the book in my library yesterday. I'm glad that I had not bought it.

I live in Connecticut, but am not a native like the author. I am not upset at her snide comments about Texas. That is the way people in Connecticut are. They are very snobby and superior. They do not believe there is anything west of the Hudson that is worth knowing about and they make fun of anything out there.

As far as this book, I liked it except for the vulgar language here and there which I guess is necessary these days. It lowers my opinion of the author, tho. She doesn't really have to write that stuff.

Interesting story with a few twists. However, Sue Grafton's Kinsey is more to my liking. I don't think I'll read another book about Poppy.

I found this to be an excellent novel. The cover makes it look like a bit of fluff, but it is hard edged and great reading. It's a hardcore crime fiction, with twists and turns that are excellently connected. I've read some of the other reviews and feel that possibly the 'lightness' of the cover led some folks to the book who may not have otherwise read it. If has the tightness and darkness of James Lee Burke, Dennis Lehane and Nevada Barr. For the record, I am a Texan and while some comments were a bit far fetched, I found nothing to be 'offended by.' I am eagerly awaiting the next Poppy Rice.

Meet Poppy Rice, former Florida prosecutor and Bronx district attorney turned cracker-jack FBI Agent. She was brought to Washington to clean up and revamp the infamous FBI crime lab. With her take-no-prisoners style, she's turned the once sloppy and sometimes inept facility into a state of the art, well-oiled machine, the envy of the rest of the world. Now she's carved out a new role for herself, reinvestigating old cases, the ones that may have fallen through the cracks in the bad old days of slipshod investigations, and that's how she comes across Rona Leigh Glueck. Rona Leigh, former teenage ax murderer, now born again Christian, is sentenced to die by lethal injection in just ten days. She was a seventeen year old alcoholic, drug addicted, malnourished and only eighty-eight pounds at the time of the murders. With her tiny frame and childlike wrists and hands, Poppy doesn't believe she could have wielded a twenty-four pound ax at least a dozen times. Her trial was one big emotional travesty, topped off with very suspect expert testimony, "glee" made her able to do it. But what really sends Poppy to Texas looking for justice is the fact that the FBI crime lab ignored a request from Rona Leigh's public defender. Poppy feels if they had done their job, it just might have proven that Rona Leigh was innocent..... Based loosely on the Karla Faye Tucker case and execution, Mary-Ann Tirone Smith has written a fresh and entertaining thriller you won't be able to put down. This is an intriguing novel that has it all...a terrific and intricate story line complete with twists, turns, and more than a few surprises that keeps you off balance and turning pages, crisp, smart writing full of witty and irreverent dialogue and Texas humor, and vivid, riveting, sometimes laugh-out-loud-funny scenes. But it's Ms Smith's well drawn, engaging and original characters that really make this book stand out, and once you've met tough, clever and very capable Poppy Rice, you'll be hooked for sure. This is a book you don't want to miss. Love Her Madly is the first of what should be a marvelous new series, and should definitely be at the top of every mystery/thriller fan's "must read" list.

I read this after reading Stewart O'Nan's vastly superior book, "The Circus Fire." Otherwise, the the novel that is the subject of this review would have made little sense.

The problem is that things just seem to happen willy nilly. The fireman casts aside a girl he's about to marry to take up with a scarred survivor of the circus fire. Why? Why was the first girl even introduced? And the novel just goes on from there.

Most irritating, perhaps, is the daughter, Martha, whose only reason for being seems to be to explain to the dumb reader the psychological workings beneath the surface. I got to the point that I just didn't care. Martha reminded me of Scarpatta's niece in a Patricia Cornwell thriller: smarmy, irritating, and ultimately a pain in the you know what.

The denouement of this novel is just too, too pat. Still, it's an improvement over the middle third of the book, which is where we are treated to all the pop psychology. Alas, this could have been so much better if it had been thought out better.

This book springboards from the real-life fire 50 years ago that killed hundreds of people and destroyed the Ringling Bros. circus when it played in Hartford. One child survived, grew up and married a mysteriously solicitous fireman. This is the story, not only of their marriage, but of the secrets that, like one layer of an onion after another, peel off and reveal, finally, the unguessable ending. I couldn't stop turning the pages