A respected surgeon and rare book collector is brutally murdered in his elegant Manhattan home, just hours after showing a book dealer the fifteenth-century manual of black magic--a grimoire--he'd received from a grateful patient. Now the healer's blood is everywhere--and only the priceless grimoire is missing.
The horrific death of her beloved father has shattered Beatrice O'Connell's quiet, sane, and orderly world. Only by tracking down the vanished malevolent tome--with its dark spell and salacious illustrations--can she hope to put things right. But the search is leading Beatrice, her ex-husband, and a mysterious occultist into an expanding labyrinth of powerful evils, a tangled web that reaches as far as the Vatican itself. What coveted secrets are hidden in the missing volume that threaten to turn Beatrice into precisely what her unseen and unrelenting enemies are determined to destroy?
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 3.0 / 5.0
an odd mix of absurd and absorbing:
You know the plot from the other reviewers. First I'll go on record as saying I've read 4 of her books and this is by far the worst, but that's because of the overall plot. Other aspects of the book are excellent. This one is also out of character from the other three. The plot is really farfetched and hard to believe. What I did find fascinating was the theme behind the plot: men's fear of women's power. She does some really interesting and absorbing things with that, not the least of which is... more info
book review:
Another murder mystry but one that is easily read. I read one to 5 pages a night and the book is sufficiently inner-linked so as to allow reading in short sessions
Now for a little mayhem:
Jane Stanton Hitchcock has certainly sharpened her writing skills. In The Witches' Hammer, one of her earliest books, she sets up an intriguing plot line, in which a somewhat priggish thirty-something researcher comes home one evening to find her world famous book collector of a father dead on the floor of the parlor. She suspects that his murder is connected to a new book he has acquired about black magic. She drops everything and sets out to avenge him. So far, so good. Now protagonist Bea must be... more info
The Witches' Hammer:
Ok...I'll give almost anyone one star for merely being able to get a book published. Sorry in this case I think it was more like half a star! The story idea was good, but the writting was too simplistic, some of her details I could do withought like all the smoking and the color of peoples teeth. Sorry I read it to the end, I try to do that with every book, and the end was greatly disappointing as well. I've read no other work by this author, but this may just stear me clear if this is an example.
