Book description
The Top End of Australia is teeming with crocodiles, poisonous snakes,
and curious Aboriginal myths. It's a strange place to choose to end
one's life, but that is what Dinah Pelerin's wealthy American uncle has
done. Dying of cancer, he has summoned his entire family-current wife,
ex-wife, assorted children and niece-to a remote, comfortless lodge
where he intends to rewrite his will and commit suicide with the aid of
a rogue Australian physician with whom he shares a mysterious history.
Dinah sees this time with her uncle as a last chance to learn the truth
about her father, who died during the commission of a felony when she
was a child. But when she arrives, she discovers that the truth has
darker ramifications. Her artist brother thinks he's possessed by the
spirit of a snake god; her uncle is obsessed with a woman he married but
could never possess; the rest of the family is seething with
resentments; and a man none of them claims to know is murdered on a
nearby island, impaled on the back of a sea turtle. A wannabe
anthropologist with a passion for mythology, Dinah tries to sort out the
complicated song lines of her own ancestors while struggling to solve
not one, but two, bizarre murders. A dying man's pending changes to
his last will and testament trigger murder in Matthews's unconvincing
debut. Seeking the truth about her father's death, Dinah Pelerin flies
from the U. S. to Australia when she learns that her mother's
cancer-ridden ex-husband, Cleon, is planning to settle family affairs
before ending his life by assisted suicide. Attending Cleon are his
first ex-wife; his current wife; resentful Aboriginals; an alcoholic
doctor; and assorted progeny, including Dinah's artist half-brother,
Lucien. An Aussie cop investigates after a poisonous snake bites Lucien,
the doctor dies under mysterious circumstances, and other shady matters
come to light. The failure to properly utilize the huge cast;
implausible, even idiotic, actions by Dinah; and the too numerous,
clumsily introduced plot elements prevent the reader from summoning much
sympathy for the heroine or the novel. Jeanne Matthews was born and
raised in Georgia. She graduated from the University of Georgia with a
degree in Journalism and has worked as a copywriter, a high school
English and Drama teacher, and a paralegal. She currently lives in
Renton, Washington with her husband, who is a law professor.
