"Forbidden Fruit" by Erica Spindler

Erica Spindler has been writing books for many years now. Some are out of print, and I have not been able to locate them at local libraries. I started off with “Red” and just completed “Forbidden Fruit”. OK, so this one is not really a mystery, although there are some murders. The novel is set in New Orleans, where the author resides. It spans the years of 1959 through 1996, and tells the tale of 3 generations of women. The eldest, Lily, lived in a house of ill repute. She wanted her daughter, Hope, to escape this life, and so she sent her away to school. Hope changed her name and disowned her mother and her history. She herself had a daughter, Glory, and she did everything in her power to protect her from the Darkness. Glory never knew Lily, having been told her grandparents were dead. It turns out, sHope was schizophrenic, and ended up committing suicide. There is an additional character that plays a major role in their lives, Victor Santos. He first meets Lily, as she hits him with her car. They end up becoming friends and he lives with her until her death. She is a mother figure to him, as his mother, who also worked as a prostitute, was killed when he was a teenager. Hope borrows money from her mother, and Santos is the go between (he does not know that Hope is Lily’s daughter). He ends up meeting Glory and they enter into a relationship. A taboo one, to Hope, and she succeeded in splitting them up. Santos becomes a police officer, in order to catch the man who killed his mother. Hope sets Santos up, and while defending himself, he discovers that Hope has been hiding the fact that she has succumbed to the Darkness and worked as a hooker for many years. Santos never was able to catch his mother’s killer, but he was able to nab a serial killer of prostitutes, and rescue a girl he had neglected many years back. It seems odd that when his mother was found dead, there was an apple at the scene and years later, the serial killer's trademark was to leave an apple with 2 bites taken from it and a cross in the girl's hand. However, the serial killer was a 20something, so he could not have been Victor's mother's killer. Victor and Glory got back together, and he even gave her his mother’s earrings, which he deeply cherished, as they were the only items he had from her. This story was unique in that it spanned so many years and involved so many hookers!

“Lucid Intervals” by Stuart Woods is the next book I’ll tackle.

See mew all later!