“North of Boston” Is The Latest Addition to our Beach Bag Book Club

Splashed with aromatics and atmospherics, North of Boston is an uncommon suspense novel.

Elizabeth Elo’s imaginative adventure is driven by Pirio Kasparov, a ‘good daughter’ who’s dear heart equals her badass tenacity.

389 pages move quickly through 32 chapters of plot twists that navigate as easily around Boston landmarks as lilt on arctic airs.

North of Boston is an unconventional story. It relies on plausible relationships tying emotional and physical suspense to sketchy docks, glacial rocks and back to beacons of civility.

Our unorthodox heroine is a noble mix of Boston Brahmin styled work-ethic coupled with Miss Marple’s intuitive sleuthing skills. There’s nothing prissy about Pirio Kasparov. Her character is cleaver, her motivations are genuine and her ability to read-the-room delivers her from mayhem to an understanding of her mercurial father on his Beacon Hill deathbed.

There’s a moral to the tale that rises like a stormy high-tide. More than a reminder to be mindful of oceanographic ecology, North of Boston harpoons the mind-set of the intellectually idle. The point equally targets the working-class as much as the entitled-class. Elo casts self-indulgent’s in a pall that is as much cautionary as foreshadowing.

Readers are challenged to be more connected to our living spirts, more aware of our soulfulness that must transcend hedonism towards living a life of meaning.  The thesis isn’t heavy handed but rather thought-provoking. North of Boston is a mind-setting compass that will linger like a mist of salted air in the consciousness of readers of this Beach-Bag Book Club worthy thriller.