Primavera Blackstone goes into hiding when she survives the plane crash that she believes was initiated by her ex-husband, Oz Blackstone. However when he dies a few months later she feels it’s safe to come out of hiding, retrieve her young son Tom and head off to Spain to live a life of luxury. Two years after this her Aunt Adrienne shows up and asks Prim to help locate her son Frank who, since he finished his prison sentence for fraud, has been working at a resort in Switzerland but has now disappeared. Prim, having previously helped her ex-husband who was apparently a private investigator as well as being a world-famous actor, agrees to become involved. Mayhem ensues.

Surely Primavera Blackstone is the kind of woman who only exists in the fantasy lives of men? There is no substance to her at all as she flits from being the world’s cleverest woman to the world’s most perfect mother to the world’s best lover while maintaining a nice line in pithy one-liners. Everyone she knows loves her, everyone she knows will risk their own death to save or protect her and everyone she knows is awestruck by her. I, on the other hand, found her tiresome and entirely unbelievable. None of the other characters is memorable enough a day and a half after finishing the book for me to make any kind of comment about them at all.

The plot started at implausible and got sillier from there. There is so much double crossing and triple crossing and parish priests saving the world kind of nonsense that I’d really lost interest well before the last ludicrous and unsatisfying twist. No one seemed to be telling the truth at any point in the story so there really wasn’t any suspense because I had nothing invested in the characters or the story.

I’m quite sure the book is not meant to be taken terribly seriously and I’m quite content with that concept but in such cases I have to find something to like and here I couldn’t. I can’t even sensibly explain why Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody (an equally implausible heroine of adventure tales) makes me smile while Primavera Blackstone just made me cranky but that’s the way it is. Once again though I am out of step with the mainstream because Jardine has published 30 novels including nine previous books featuring Oz Blackstone and they seem to be very popular but I’m afraid I didn’t see much here that would have me hunting down any of his other titles. ( )

Even after reflecting for a few hours since finishing this book I'm still not quite sure what to make of it.
It is in many ways a light read, a bit of a thriller with some sex thrown in for good measure.
As the blurb says, Oz Blackstone, the subject of 9 previous Quintin Jardine titles, has died and Prim now has custody of their 7 year old son. Prim is in fact Oz's ex-wife, and Tom has a step-mum with whom he spends some of his time. When Auntie Ade, sister of Prim's dead mother, phones to ask if she can come to stay, Prim agrees. Auntie Ade on arrival reveals that she wants Prim to track down her son Frank who appears to have disappeared without trace. Auntie Ade agrees to stay with Tom while Prim flits off to find Frank, and then disappears herself without trace while Tom is out walking the dog on the beach.

In the long run I found the plot a whole lot too unlikely, accompanied by an un-nerving suspicion that I wasn't being told the whole truth. Prim thinks others around her a bit gullible and uncaring, but the same accusation can be levelled at her. I didn't find her a particularly likeable character. I also kept feeling there was quite a bit of back story that I wasn't privy to, and have just the vaguest suspicion that Oz isn't really dead. I didn't find the final resolution all that satisfactory either.

On the other hand, INHUMAN REMAINS is now the first in the Primavera Blackstone series with a second title BLOOD RED published in 2009. So here is your chance to be in at the beginning of a series, and maybe you will like this one better than I did. ( )