Tabula Rasa [Hardcover]

I loved it. Loved the tone. So entertaining! Such fun! And it's a horror story besides with a truly frightening person lurking. Very engaging story with people you will love. Written by an honest-to-goodness Private Eye who specializes in arson, so the theme is Fire, and while you are enjoying the story, you'll learn a lot about fires too.

When I began to read Tabula Rasa I expected another one of Shelly Reuben's great fire procedurals. That would have been enough to please me. This new book, though, is both as good as her previous thrillers and, frankly, much better--even more of a page turner. Her devoted readers will love it because Shelly Reuben continues to give us new things to learn about arson. But she will get a whole raft of new readers who will appreciate her fabulous new intriguing characters. The stunning Annie brings you into her sophisticated but also earthy orbit. Merry is gorgeous, difficult, and captivating. Her husband and brother, fireman and cop respectively, are characters the reader wants more of (and I hear that there will be a sequel to this book--I am really excited). Shelly's use of the Red Cross is ingenious as a device for revealing clues to this mystery. Mystery, yes! But more than a mystery at the same time. Shelly Reuben has written a gripping novel. A must-read.

The baby who lives in the ugly house in the village of Sojourn has dark, staring eyes, but never smiles, only watches. Her mother often speculates that the infant is a changeling. In the hospital, Edith fills out the birth certificate as "Baby Tuttle", promising to give her child a lovely name later. But she never does.

Billy Nightingale comes to firefighting through his avid curiosity and inventiveness, fascinated by the antiquated pumps of the Fire Department in his home town of Elk Mountain, Wyoming. Later, in New York City, Billy lives his dream, becoming a fire marshal, close friends with his brother-in-law, state trooper Sebastian Bly. Nightingale and Bly arrive at the scene of a terrible fire, where two children are lost to the flames, the mother comforted by a neighbor. Edith Tuttle fails to mention a third child to the police. Spooked by the malevolent aura of the fire-ravaged house, Nightingale searches randomly, sure he is missing something. He discovers a terrified, but silent, baby under the foundation of the house, where she has crawled for safety.

Something is terribly wrong at the scene of this fire. Billy's sister, Annie, and her husband, Sebastian, work closely with children's services to adopt the baby, whom they name Meredith, her mother permanently out of the picture. The next few years pass quietly, Merry a contented child. But when Merry inquires about her birth mother, the Bly's are challenged to protect their daughter from a history that could scar her future, their only concern to give this child the bright prospects she so richly deserves. This innocent that came to them from a house of death has known a life free of chaos, stimulated by a loving environment, her career as a professional ballerina already on track. Merry inadvertently sets in motion a chain of events that will threaten her and her adoptive family years later.

Reuben's characters are energetic, their personalities well-defined. The writing crackles with energy and an appreciation of the subtleties of fires, the methods of arson and the clues that help investigators identify causes. Besides the relevant information about arson investigation, a search for adoptive parents and the intricacies of a dancer's life, the novel also deals with the emotional aspects of adoption, especially when a child is driven to find her birth parents. In Tabula Rasa, the happy family circle is shattered by a child's obsessive quest for identity and the dark forces that search unleashes. The author's personal expertise is extensive and evident in the novel, adding interest and believability, a fascinating foray into an area rarely experienced by most. Tabula Rasa suggests that a blank slate can be written on any number of ways, DNA directed toward success instead of failure, with the aid of a loving family. Luan Gaines/2005.