Charmed Circle by Dolores Stewart Riccio

Title: Charmed Circle
Author: Dolores Stewart Riccio
ISBN: 0739451774
Publisher: Kensington Books, 2003
Hardcover, 276 pages
Genre: Amateur Sleuth, Cozy, #2 Cass Shipton mystery
Rating: C+
Source: Paperback Swap

First Line: An enchanting afternoon in April, windows wide open to the scent of lilac and ocean breeze freshening the house-- my spirit should have been lifting and soaring like a gull over the waves, but here was Deirdre sipping tea and dispensing gloomy  suspicions at my kitchen table.

Between her herbalist business and her circle of friends, Cass Shipton has been busy. The last thing she needs is a troubled teen underfoot, but when "Freddie" McGinty shows up trailing disaster in her wake, Cass feels that it's her duty to help the girl understand and control the powerful gifts she's been given.

All Plymouth is talking about the recent disappearance of a local family, and Cass begins having disturbing visions of dense forests, a shallow grave, and a very sinister man. Cass calls on her circle of friends to help her find the missing family before it's too late.

So far, I've enjoyed this series which gives insight into the Wiccan way of life, a way of life that's very much in tune with nature and has a great deal more to do with common sense and compassion than most people realize. What makes Riccio's books so enjoyable is threefold: (1) Cass's "conversations" with her dog, (2) every woman in Cass's circle of friends has her own foibles; no one is perfect, and (3) it's so refreshing to have a female character over the age of forty who has a fun, healthy sex life.

The thing that I questioned in this book was the treatment of the villain. For most of the book, he's a phantom and very seldom seen. All the reader knows is someone opens a box and-- BOOM! the person is blown to smithereens. As the body count mounts, the bad guy almost becomes Super Villain, and his capture at the end is tame in comparison to the trail of destruction he'd strewn earlier.

Be that as it may, it had been two or three years since I read the first book in the series, but I had no problem getting back into the setting and characters again. Don't feel as though you have to begin at the beginning. The cast of characters and their lifestyle are well worth getting to know.

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REVIEW: Circle of Five

Title: Circle of Five
Author: Dolores Stewart Riccio
ISBN: 0758203004
Protagonist: herbalist and Wiccan Cassandra Shipton
Setting: present-day Plymouth, Massachusetts
Series: #1
Rating: B

First Line: The truck driver, a big ruddy-faced man with a cheerful demeanor, was whistling a tune from Gypsy as he applied a mask of clown makeup.

Perhaps I'm too well-versed in serial killers, but that first line immediately made me think of John Wayne Gacey. Perhaps that's what I was meant to think. Cassandra Shipton's children have all flown the nest, she's divorced her alcoholic bum of a husband, she's changed her name, and she's moved into her grandmother's cottage on the shore of Cape Cod. She's built up a successful herbal business, and she's found four true friends. They are all practicing Wiccans who keep their beliefs very low-key due to the opinion and behavior of their neighbors. Cassandra sees a stranger at the meat counter of the local supermarket and has a vision which tells her that this man is a killer of young boys. She tells her circle of friends, and they decide to look into it because they can't go to the police with a "vision". No matter how many protection spells they cast, they are such complete bunglers as detectives that it doesn't take the killer clown more than a nano-second to know what they're doing. Are they going to live long enough to put Bozo behind bars?

A few things in this book didn't work for me, chiefly the romance between Cassandra and Joe. It was probably meant to be mystical and spiritual, but it left me feeling that the main character had lost her marbles. Although I like Riccio's characterization, I couldn't be a member of this coven because--although each is wacky in her own way--there were too many instances of their claws showing when they dealt with each other. The serial killer was meant to be creepy, and even though my heartbeat did rachet up a time or two, I mostly found him bland.

Although it sounds as though I didn't like the book, I did--with reservations. I'll read the next book in the series because I did find the characters likeable, their lifestyle interesting and Riccio's writing to flow well. I want to see where the author takes these characters she's created.