Review: What Lies Between Good and Evil
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 08 18, 2011
The Witch Tree by author Karin Kaufman opens with protagonist Anna Denning standing in the center of a blood-soaked homicide scene. Not what you might expect in a routine day of a professional genealogist. At least, not in my experience.I've enjoyed reading mysteries and suspense novels most of my life, and have spent over thirteen years researching my family's lineage. I was primed to enjoy this novel, but it evolved into one of those fabulous guilty pleasures in life.Ms. Kaufman brings life to her work with colorful synonyms: "splinters of glass ... like teeth in the splayed jaws of a shark" and un-clichéd characters: "The dark tuft of hair front and center on his head, surrounded by pale, bare scalp ..."Within the loose parameters of this suspenseful mystery is a tense, ongoing battle between "good" and the collective unintentionally bad-partially bad-and totally misguided "evil."Main character Anna Denning, who has distinct opinions about what is good, works diligently to save those susceptible to what she knows is evil. Ms. Kaufman, on the other hand, presents a broader scope throughout the novel, allowing for individual interpretation of what is acceptable.