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    Full Stop
    Full Stop
    Full Stop
    Ebook246 pages3 hours

    Full Stop

    By Joan Smith

    2.5/5

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Loretta Lawson is already a little apprehensive about spending a hot, muggy weekend alone in New York City at her friend Toni's apartment. And it seems her fears are confirmed when she receives a series of mysterious and threatening phone calls. What's more, as she explores the exciting, unfamiliar city, she has the uneasy impression that someone is watching her, perhaps even following her. Is Loretta the target of these unnerving attentions or are they aimed at Toni?

    Loretta begins to think that she cannot trust her own judgment; the one person who might lend a hand--her ex-husband, journalist John Tracey, also in New York on a story--has too many problems of his own to help. In the end, Loretta must face the terrifying events that unfold alone. . . .
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateDec 1, 2011
    ISBN9781448207886
    Full Stop
    Author

    Joan Smith

    Joan Alison Smith (born 27 August 1953, London) is an English novelist, journalist and human rights activist, who is a former chair of the Writers in Prison committee in the English section of International PEN. Smith was educated at a state school before reading Latin at the University of Reading in the early 1970s. After a spell as a journalist in local radio in Manchester, she joined the staff of the Sunday Times in 1979 and stayed at the newspaper until 1984. She has had a regular column in the Guardian Weekend supplement, also freelancing for the newspaper and in recent years has contributed to The Independent, the Independent on Sunday, and the New Statesman. In her non-fiction Smith displays a commitment to atheism, feminism and republicanism; she has travelled extensively and this is reflected in her articles. In 2003 she was offered the MBE for her services to PEN, but refused the award. She is a supporter of the political organisation, Republic and an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society. In November 2011 she gave evidence to the Leveson Inquiry into press and media standards following the telephone hacking practiced by the News of the World. She testified that she considered celebrities thought they could control press content if they put themselves into the public domain when, in reality the opposite was more likely. She repeated a claim that she has persistently adhered to in her writings that the press is misogynistic.

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    2.5/5

    13 ratings2 reviews

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    • 2/5
      This proved to be a major disappointment. I had enjoyed Joan Smith’s previous novels featuring the engaging Loretta Lawson, the earnest, feminist academic with an alarming penchant for finding herself caught up in murder cases, and consequently was looking forward to this one.Written in the mid-1990s, it marked a bit of a departure from her earlier cases as Loretta is in America, having spent a year as visiting professor at a university in California (unspecified, but readily identifiable as UCLA, one of my own alma maters). As the novel opens, she has just arrived in New York, where she will be spending a few days flat sitting for a friend before departing back to the UK. Right from the opening of the book, she finds herself oppressed by New York. It is the height of summer and the city is unpleasantly hot, and seems relentlessly noisy. People’s tempers are ragged, and there is an irrepressible undercurrent of agitation. Once established in the friend’s flat, she tries to relax, but finds that she is soon beset by nuisance phone calls, that become increasingly disturbing. She also start to feel as if she is being watched as she wanders around the city, trying to take in some of the sights, and visit various galleries.Smith builds the sense of tension effectively, and the reader can easily empathise with Loretta’s response to the growing sense of alarm. Unfortunately, the actual plot is not sufficiently strong to live up to this scenario setting. While her previous novels had been soundly constructed, with immensely plausible characters and storylines, this one relied too heavily on coincidence, flimsy conjecture and a host of characters with little hint of plausibility at all. I see that this was Joan Smith’s last Loretta Lawson novel, which is a shame in some ways, although in other ways I might have preferred for her to have bowed out with the previous novel, rather than having it end with one that lets the series down.
    • 4/5
      Londoner borrows NYC apt of friend and gets threatening phones calls. Fun read because the leading character goes to all the tourist spots in NYC.

    Book preview

    Full Stop - Joan Smith

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