Three Fates

April 1, 2002
Audio Reviews reflect PW's assessment of the audio adaptation of a book and should be quoted only in reference to the audio version. Fiction THREE FATES Nora Roberts, read by Bernadette Quigley. Brilliance, unabridged, 10 cassettes, 14 hrs., $34.95 ISBN 1-58788-693-6 This book—Roberts's fifth new one released this year—features all the romance, drama and intrigue that fans have come to expect from the bestselling writer. It also offers a bit more: clichéd characters (e.g., a rough-talking, street-smart stripper; a reclusive alcoholic brainiac) and well-trod ground (e.g., a grand-scale shipwreck and the international art scene). Despite a predictable plot—involving the Sullivan family and their quest to find a small silver figurine that belonged to their ancestors and narrowly escaped sinking with the Lusitania
in 1915—reader Quigley triumphs to make this a winning production. Her performance rings with subtle nuances, accents ranging from Czech to Irish, and theatrical crescendos and decrescendos. The story opens just before the Lusitania
meets its fate, and Quigley draws listeners round with an ominous "happily unaware he'd be dead in 23 minutes, Henry W. Wiley imagined pinching the nicely rounded rump of the young blonde who was directly in his line of sight." In this scene and throughout the story, she puts herself inside each character, giving each one a unique mannerism, tone and feeling—no matter how formulaically Roberts may have drawn them. Quigley's presentation is captivating; Roberts's story, regrettably, is not quite. Simultaneous release with the Putnam hardcover (Forecasts, Apr.1).

April 1, 2002
Acts of thievery ultimately lead to justice in the wildly prolific Roberts's latest romantic suspense novel. The little silver statues representing Greek mythology's Three Fates are an art collector's dream: they're extremely valuable individually, but priceless as a trio—and legend has it that when put together, they endow their owner with power over destiny. When a German U-boat torpedoes the Lusitania
in 1915, petty burglar Felix Greenfield is in the midst of purloining one of the Fates from a first-class stateroom. Felix survives the ship's sinking and vows to reform. Flash to the present, in which three of Felix's descendants—calculating Malachi, slick Gideon and intelligent Rebecca Sullivan—have just had their Fate stolen by Anita Gaye, a ruthless and menacing antiques dealer. Vowing to recover Felix's statue, the three siblings depart Ireland to search the globe, finding love along the way with a pan-phobic Greek scholar, a stripper and a security expert. Like the Three Fates, the six principals learn that they will only be powerful enough to defeat Anita if they can operate as a single unit. Though it's a slick, snappy read, this character-heavy sudser is far from Roberts's best. She uses the words "three" and "fate" so often that the repetition becomes comic, the siblings' exotic globe-trotting amounts to little more than location name-dropping and Anita, a villainess of Cruella de Vil proportions, is a caricature rather than a character. But Roberts has been so popular, and for so long, that her legion of fans will undoubtedly forgive her for this one while eagerly awaiting her next.