Let Me Call You Sweetheart Review

Publication Date : May 8, 1995

Storyline

Kerry is in Dr. Smith’s office, waiting for her daughter’s scar to be stitched by the aesthetic surgeon. In the waiting room, she can see patients going in and out of the doctor’s office. Among the stream of his clients, that’s when she notices something odd. Two of Dr. Smith’s patients actually have same after-procedure face. That the doctor intentionally gives his customers a same face is strange enough. But what’s even more bizzare is that “the face” also feels so familiarly important to Kerry.

Kerry McGrath is an assistant prosecutor with highly inquisitive nature. That face that Dr. Smith has been eerily recreating over and over definitely intrigues her enough to give it another once-over. And turns out, she doesn’t have to look far. “The face” transpires to be Dr. Smith’s daughter, Suzanne Reardon’s. But the thing is, Suzanne died over ten years ago. She was killed in stagey manner, and her husband, Skip Reardon has been in prison ever since, charged for committing the murder.

In the span of her search, Kerry has been multiple times warned. Kerry has been waiting to be nominated as a judge, and now she’s only one call away to be one. Opening a closed case which the offender has already been paying his time in penitentiary surely would call troubles. And troubles might mean jeopardizing her bright prospect of career. Should she leave it alone then? But in that case, how would she be a worthy judge if she ignored her own thirst of truth?

Comments:

Nothing amazing, but okay.

Let Me Call You Sweetheart is wreathed with abundant characters, while only a handful are given significant stories. To me personally, the heap of characters was quite distracting because then my focus got on and off as new characters were constantly being introduced. The numerous parallel plots in accordance with the characters, like Jimmy Weeks’ and Jason Arnott’s, in my opinion, make the story sort of all over the place. It’s a shame because some roles initally show a lot of potential to be explored, but then get drowned by the number of random names and empty chapters. I felt like, the string that is supposed to tie all pieces up together is not thick and strong enough to give us readers the sense of engrossment.

As for the mystery itself, this is an old-time book, so I guess it’s natural that the riddles are just a tad old-fashioned. They are not that surprising, I think mainly because, between the clues dropped across the narrative and the final explanation of the mysterious quagmire, there’s no cleverness to it.

Read it?

I’ve never been a huge fan of MHC’s tbh, and this book hasn’t made any difference so far. But! MHC’s books tend to be easy on the read, and they’re quick in pace. So, if I had a scrap of leisure time, it still wouldn’t hurt to read stories of hers.

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