Edward Stewart (1938–1996)

The story follows Stephanie Lang and Christine Avery, two dancers who become best friends as they encounter grueling workouts and the wild personalities of dance instructors. Actually, pretty much everyone in the ballet world has a larger-than-life personality. The story is full of over-the-top twists as each character pursues his or her goal with single-minded dedication. With a company director obsessed with casting two dancers for one role, without revealing which one is the understudy, it’s easy to get caught up in the dramatic twists of daily life in the ballet company.

Read the rest (No spoilers you can't find on the back cover) here… (meer)

I ran across Edward Stewart’s Lt. Vincent Cardozo series in an Amazon Kindle special promotion. They have been resurrected by Open Road Media, and I’m glad I found them. Stewart, who died at age 58, in 1996, had been a relatively unknown author, but this series promised to perhaps change that. It consists of four books, the last, Jury Double, having been published after his death. One reviewer suggested had he lived the series might have evolved into something like Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series; high praise, indeed. This one is the first.

The book begins with the vignette of a woman awaking after lying in a coma for almost 100 months following an accident. The scene then shifts to Cordozo on the beach being called to the homicide of a man in a mask whose leg had been amputated.

Well written with some nice phrases, e.g.: “ The air in the stairwell pressed like a blanket soaked in hot water.” and “a man who moved with the ease of a stone wall learning to walk.” Dobbs, the gossip columnist reminds me of Alice Longworth who said, “If you have nothing good to say come sit here by me.” He had some wickedly funny comments during his interview with the cops.

Another telling quote that hit home: “No matter what else happens,” he said, “no matter what else you discover has happened, hold on to work. Work is the last, the most important, the only frontier. Everything else comes and goes—but work stays. The one friend, the one parent, the one child, the one lover. It’s the only thread we’ve got to guide us through this labyrinth we call a life.”

On the other hand, this is not a book for the squeamish. There are some descriptions of sexual depravities that would, I’m sure, disturb the fearful and puritanical. I knocked off a star for what I thought were coincidences beyond belief, but generally still a good police procedural.… (meer)

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I received a free copy from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.



One of my guilty pleasures is an Australian youth series about a ballet school called 'Dance Academy'. Reading Ballerina brought back all the feels. I know it's promoted as 'the book before there was Black Swan' but I personally think they should have used that card a bit earlier, because the film came out quite some time ago.

I've read in some reviews this is a typical 70's book, with all the themes that are - apparently - present in these books. I don't know if it's right, I haven't read enough 70's books to be able to really say something about it. Ballerina was first published in 1978 but one of the things I found to be most striking when reading it was that it doesn't feel like reading something that's almost 40 years old. OK, they don't use mobile phones and there's a lot of talk about Sovjet Russia, but it never bothered me.



I enjoyed reading it, 450 pages didn't seem too much, and I really liked the story. It may not be the most original story, but it's a very nice read nevertheless. Near the ending I believed the story was getting a bit too dramatical, but it didn't ruin the story for me. I would recommend this as an easy read.… (meer)