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“The Iron Girl ”

written by Harriet Klausner on 03/07/2005

The Iron Girl

Ellen Hart

St. Martin's, Sept 2005, $24.95, 352 pp.

ISBN 0312317492



Now that Kenzie is in Jane Lawless's life, she is so grateful to have found love for the second time after a ten year hiatus she gets up the nerve to go through her dead lover's things in order to put Christine in the past. She is shocked to find a gun in Christine's briefcase and when a friend brings over a statue that she was to give to Jane ten years ago but forgot all about it until now, Jane realizes both things were the property of the Simoneau family.



Christine worked for Bill McBride of McBride Realty and she was selling the property of Bernadette Simoneau who moved with her son Philip into the family mansion. Not long before Christine died, the matriarch, Philip and the cook were murdered. The handy man was convicted of the crime. After visiting the black man in prison Jane believes that he is innocent; she starts asking questions in the hopes of finding the real murderers because she believes Christine would want her to do this.



The reader sees flashbacks of the last weeks of Christine's life and how she came into possession of the gun and the statue. They also read about the revelation about Christine's death and how heart wrenching it is for the two lovers to acknowledge this. In the present, Jane meets Greta who could pass for Christine's double propping pictures of Jane's new restaurant. Jane's friend believes Greta has a motive for crossing Jane's path and the reader slowly began to believe it too, but wonder why. The decade old triple homicide was constructed with several suspects who had a motive and the opportunity to kill the victims. Ellen Hart has written one of the best novels of her career



Harriet Klausner