"Delightfully weird"
New Zealand police officer Brian "Bad" Phelan goes on
vacation near the French-Italian border to recover from
injuries he received while defusing a bomb. While there,
he helps the locals recover the drowned body of a woman,
but notices how the victim looks like the twin of someone
he met years ago in an eerily similar scenario. Unable to ignore the doppelganger, Bad begins making
inquiries into the deceased, Martine Dardo, but he finds is
his unofficial investigation is competing with other
inquiries. His efforts lead to a Sister Raimondi. Father
Daniel Octave, assisted by scholar Eve Moskelutz, has been
looking into the qualifications for sainthood for the WW II
heroine Sister Raimondi who was killed by Nazis. Meanwhile
Eve's twin sister Dawn studies tongues and looking warily
yet actively at the goings on is the vampire Lou Ila. Whether you read this novel in DAYLIGHT or in the evening,
this is one delightfully weird tale. The story line seems
disconnected yet the talent of Elizabeth Knox pulls it
together so that the audience begins to wonder whether God
will provide signs that the deceased nun is a saint or
whether a vampire is one of God's creatures. None of the
cast is likable except the poetic vampire, but that is part
of the unnatural fun as fans of Ms. Knox will enjoy
this non-linear novel that makes a reader struggle to
define saint. Harriet Klausner
Reviewed by PNR Group Member
Posted March 28, 2003
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Brian "Bad" Phelan, a New Zealand policeman and bomb
disposal expert, likes to live dangerously. Bad is an
expert climber and caver and, while on vacation on the
French/Italian border, he helps bring a body out of a
rocky, wave-swept cove. Curiously, the dead woman bears
striking similarities to a young woman he met years ago,
shortly before she disappeared in a flooded French cave.
Haunted by the strange connection, Bad is compelled to
investigate. In following a series of increasingly eerie leads, Bad
learns the story of the Blessed Martine Raimondi, a World
War II resistance heroine and martyred nun. He also meets
Eve Moskelute, the beautiful widow of a celebrated French
artist; Daniel Octave, a Canadian Jesuit who investigates
miracles; and most surprisingly, Dawn Moskelute, Eve's twin
sister, who just may be a vampire. Sensuous and heavenly, Daylight combines Elizabeth Knox's
greatest gifts: her wildly imaginative storytelling and her
clear eye for atmosphere and place. Daylight is set in one
of the most beautiful regions on Earth, from the unspoiled
beauty of the Cinque Terre to the antiquities of Avignon,
yet much of the action takes place in a world the tourist
never sees, a world of caves and secret passages, of hidden
cloisters and the rooms behind doors in the vaulted tunnels
of medieval streets. It is in this "world beneath the
world" that Bad Phelan finds himself face to face with
history and myth, with phantoms whose hearts are still
beating, and hungry, and able to break. Genre: Fantasy, Vampire
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