Belinda

Belinda is the third novel in Mark Zvonkovic's 'Raymond Hatcher Stories' series and I felt it connected most strongly with the first book, A Lion In The Grass. Belinda picks up with one of the significant characters, Jay Jackson, who is struggling to come to terms with the death of his former mentor, the eponymous Raymond. Jay's salvation might be found in a second chance romance with Lyn - Belinda - who is also at a turning point in her life. A woman who has always defined herslf by her career, Lyn is now unwittingly facing down the prospect of compulsory retirement until Jay's contacting her out of the blue opens up new possibilities. I liked Lyn as a strong character and thought Zvonkovic was convincing in his portrayal of a woman at this time of life. We spend considerable time witnessing her inner thoughts which gave me a real understanding of her fears and motivations. The same is true of Jay's depiction and I liked being able to see not only how these two interacted with each other, but also what drove them to make certain decisions.

A parallel narrative in Belinda is that of a legal process about buying an oil company and, unfortunately, this aspect did not work so well for me. Other than Lyn being one of the lawyers involved in the drawn-out negotiations, I failed to understand the full connection and often became confused about who was supposed to be working for whom and what each of these men was trying to achieve. I was disappointed by this as, obviously, much of the novel's tension was probably played out in these scenes. To my mind, there were too many peripheral characters clouding the plot and this slowed the story's pace right down. So I finished up by being somewhat ambivalent about Belinda. One storyline really appealed to me, but the other left me cold.