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Carnal Innocence (1991)

Carnal Innocence (1991)

Book Info

Author
Genre
Rating
3.85 of 5 Votes: 4
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ISBN
0553295977 (ISBN13: 9780553295979)
Language
English
Publisher
bantam

About book Carnal Innocence (1991)

This title will always make me laugh for two reasons. One, because my mother-in-law cannot say the word "Carnal" correctly to save her life. (She says car-nail...and that's funny to me). Two, because there is nothing carnal about this book, at least the first two-thirds of the story. The title is misleading...like that time I was reading a biographical account of Queen Elizabeth's life in England and it was called "The Virgin Queen". So...the town is Innocence, Mississippi, a dusty, boring little speck of a town where train tracks don't even come close to bringing livelihood and culture to its residents. The Longstreet family, a "money family", has pretty much ran the town since the beginning of time. The three adult siblings (Dwayne, Josie, and Tucker) still live in the plantation home where hordes of Longstreets have lived since the beginning of plantation homes. And their housekeeper of 30-some years still works for them. All three siblings have nasty skeletons in their rich closets...alcoholism, promiscuity, and laziness, to name a few.Caroline Waverly, a Yankee violinist, returns to Innocence (hahahahaaaaa) following a nervous breakdown after years of being a touring orchestral musician and taking orders from everyone in her life, except herself. Her grandmother has willed her home and land to Caroline. It's not a plantation home, but it's a big ol' house with a pond. Caroline draws enough interest from the locals who wonder who what when, all about the Yankee now living on their turf.Female bodies keep showing up in the pond. It's pesky and it's the mark of a serial killer. A bigshot FBI man (another Yankee) shows up to help the local sheriff solve this crime. I read a Nora Roberts story a few years ago, "Angels Fall", and it has the similar theme: woman returns "home", small and tightly-knit community (that one was in the mountains in...Montana? Wyoming? Does it matter?) and a murder to solve. All fingers point to the man-of-the-story (Tucker Longstreet) but you just KNOW he didn't do it. He's a good guy, right?I will say this...I do love me a good murder mystery, and Nora Roberts kept me guessing up in until the last fifty pages or so. She knows what "red herring" means, because my serial killer wasn't hers...she even gave me hints! She's a good storyteller. As for the ridiculous title...don't let it throw you. If you're going to get thrown and confused, it's because of the many townsfolk you have to keep track of. Remember, this is small-town Mississippi. Everyone is up in everyone's business.

Well done romantic mystery suspense. I was engaged all the way through.Wonderful character creation. Wonderful dialogue. Various conflicts are well done.An example of fun dialogue: Tucker is this slow talking rich southern man who sleeps with a lot of women. Heroine is not interested. He makes a seductive comment to her. She says “You’re sick.” He replies “I do feel a fever comin’ on.” I loved the way clues and things came out gradually during the book - like the clue someone saw that led them to discover who tampered with a car. I loved Tucker’s relationship with a teenage boy -- heartwarming.AUDIOBOOK NARRATOR:I recently heard Judith Ivey doing a southern accent that was irritating. Tom Stechschulte (this audiobook narrator) did a wonderful southern accent. And he was soooo sexy as Tucker. Wow. And he did women well - no effeminate gay guy sounds. He did so many different voices well. He’s now one of my favorite narrators.OTHER BOOKS:Nora Roberts is hit and miss with me. The hits – my favorites are: Carnal Innocence, Born in Fire, Angels Fall, The Witness, Northern Lights, and Sea Swept.DATA:Narrative mode: 3rd person. Unabridged audiobook length: 17 hrs and 55 mins (402 pages). Swearing language: strong including religious swear words, but not often used. Sexual language: moderate. Number of sex scenes: about 9, but most were vaguely referred to with no details. Setting: around 1991 small town Innocence, Mississippi. Book copyright: 1991. Genre: romantic mystery suspense.

Do You like book Carnal Innocence (1991)?

Fantastic book! It is about a concert violinist who has a emotional breakdown and escapes by moving into the old house she just inherited from her recently passed grandmother in rural Mississippi. Her second day there she finds a body in the pond on the property. She soon starts meeting all the town folk and learns that this is the third woman murdered in this rural area in the last 2 months and there was also one similar in Nashville a few hours away.The FBI gets involved and there are lots of suspects and lots of racist a$$ holes, but the main characters step in and save the day. In the end when you discover who the murderer is, it is an interesting twist and surprise. Although this person did trip my radar on more than one occasion through the book, but the circumstances of how the bodies were mutilated made me pass on this particular suspect. I think statistically the type of serial killer that would commit these kind of mutilations would be much different than the books perpetrator.It was a very good book. One I plan to read again.
—Chinablue_25 West Bostedor

REVIEW OF AUDIO & KINDLE: MARCH 28, 2014Narrator: Tom StechschulteProbably my favorite Nora Roberts, for now. NR, like Linda Howard, is a hit-or-miss with me, unlike Sandra Brown, whose books I usually do well with.The Narrator: Stechschulte, or Tom (easier to spell!) is every bit the seasoned and excellent narrator he is. I'd heard him once on a Christine Feehan Ghostwalkers series which he also narrates but Carnal Innocence shows off his skills a lot more. Tom's Tucker Longstreet brings across the man's Southern charm very effectively and while the rest of the male cast are also southern-accented, I had no difficulty differentiating him from Dwayne, his brother, or Burke, the sheriff.Tom's female voices were especially good - sounding like husky, warm-voiced women, lending a sexiness that I might not even, otherwise, feel about the heroine. I enjoyed Tom's performance here so much that I just might start listening to the rest of the Ghostwalkers even though I'm not a super-soldier-paranormal fan.The Story: I did not realize I'd read this book (would have been in the early 90s when NR was an auto-buy) until I reached the part where Billy T and friends were about to lynch Toby March, and then I remembered who the murderer was. It still didn't diminish my enjoyment and when I finished, I was wondering if there are anymore old, classic Roberts like this one. I've read quite a few but I don't recall liking any as much as CI. And I'm talking about her books written in the early to mid 90s. She was still an auto-buy, despite being in my 'B' list, because there were only a handful of contemporary romantic suspense writers at the time - Howard, Krentz, Brown, and Lowell, who dropped off my radar a long time ago, as did Krentz.Tucker is easily the star of this book and while I never did warm up to Caroline, I thought she gave Tucker back as good as he dished out. I like them enough as a couple to wish there was a second book where I could revisit them and see how they're doing a few years down the line. I can so easily picture Tucker's enjoyment of the various places he'd visit as he accompanies Caroline on her world tour. I know Tucker would make a hilarious tourist whose audio blog (if there was such a thing) I would follow!Overall, I found this NR a very satisfying balance of romance and murder mystery suspense, even if I am currently surfeit with serial killers.
—ElaineY

The setting of the sweltering, southern small-town is fantastic. It is inhabited with flamboyant characters who get under your skin quickly. They breath life in to their town with gossip, passion, love, death and everything in between. Add a rivting suspense with twists and turns that surprised the hell outta me and I was enthralled by this story from beginning to end. The romance was heart-tugging sweet, Caroline and Tucker are endearing characters with their personal quirks and their chemistry was evident from their first encounter! Once again I'm enamored by the characters, both main and supporting, and the setting that was full of southern charm. But the suspense plot added a thrill that shows Nora Roberts has a nack for incorporating various storythreads into a flowing, exciting read!
—Leontine

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