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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781416562153
ISBN: 141656215X
Label: Scribner
Manufacturer: Scribner
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 240
Publication Date: 2008-04-08
Publisher: Scribner
Studio: Scribner

It's a hot, humid July night in New York City. Where were you when the lights went out?

A New York City resident for many years, Carol Higgins Clark was there during the blackout of 2003. Not surprisingly, she felt that Regan and Jack Reilly should one day share the experience!

As Zapped begins, the Reillys return home from a summer weekend to the loft in Tribeca they are in the agonizing process of renovating and expanding. They are looking forward to a quiet supper on their newly acquired rooftop terrace. But it's not meant to be. While Jack goes to pick up Chinese food, Regan enters their apartment, unaware that a nervous thief, who preceded her by minutes, is hiding in the front closet. A thief who knows about a hidden safe that Regan and Jack have yet to discover. Minutes later, the blackout strikes, and both Reillys are called into action.

A new gallery in SoHo, featuring treasured glass sculptures from all over the world, has been burglarized. As head of the NYPD Major Case Squad, Jack oversees several departments. Art theft is one of them.

PI Regan hears from her best friend, Kit, who is in Manhattan on business. She's been abandoned at a comedy club by a colleague from an insurance convention, Georgina Mathieson, who ran out for a cigarette moments before the blackout struck and never came back. Kit gets a call that Georgina is disturbed and dangerous. Fueled by her rage at a college boyfriend who dumped her, Georgina seeks revenge on unsuspecting young blond men. She was last seen getting into a cab outside the club -- with a tall blond. Regan heads the search for Georgina and her potential victim.

Meanwhile, Lorraine Lily, an almost famous actress, returns to New York City the night of the blackout, after spending three months in England doing a play, and is informed by her estranged husband, Conrad Spreckles, that he'd sold his loft to their next-door neighbors, the Reillys. Lorraine had never told him about the hidden safe she'd had installed in the closet. If she doesn't get back what's in there, she's sure her budding career will be ruined.

In Zapped, Clark takes readers on a tour of the city they won't forget and introduces them to a wonderful cast of colorful, eccentric characters whose stories intersect in precarious and often humorous ways during one very dark and hot summer night.

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Not Up to Usual Standard
Review: I'm afraid that I have to agree with most of the reviewers. This was the weakest of the Regan Reilly mystery series. The book lacked suspense and pausibility. The reader knew early on what the outcome would be, and why would anyone attempt to break into a dwelling that one previously owned when contact with the new owners could easily be made, relating to them that some important papers had been inadvertently left behind. Also unexplained is how cellphones and laptop computers can be used so freely without without electrical recharging. Additionally, Georgina was not a believable antagonist. Branding someone in the midst of a NY City blackout does not appear to warrant the extensive involvement of either a private investigator, numerous unrelated strangers, or the head of the major crime division of the NYPD.

If this book is a precursor of what we can expect from Carol Higgins Clark in the future, I'm afraid her readership will suffer immensely. She may have,like so many other mystery writers, simply been zapped of any fresh and original plot twists.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Horrible-Wish I Could Put Zero Stars
Review: Really, really glad I got this at the library and didn't spend any money on it.
The plot - Crazy lady actress leaves some letters in a loft her estranged husband sold to Regan Reilly(heroine of this series). Instead of just going by (or calling) to retrieve her letters, she hatches this plot with her "friend" to go break in and get them back. This happens during a blackout of NYC where all cellphones work and our heroine manages to drive thru everything to rescue a friend and find a mystery to solve, no problem.
Can't believe this even got published.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Awful... Just... Just Awful !!
Review: My friend bought me this book for my birthday knowing I liked mysteries (If you actually want to call this a mystery),therefore, I felt obligated to finish it even though I didn't like it 20 pages in. I've since made a vow to myself never to be this loyal to any friend. No friend is worth reading this garbage.
Ok, where to start? First of all, this is the only (and last) book I've ever read of this series or this author for that matter. Is it just me or is this the perfect, crime-solving couple that's better looking than you or I but not quite Brad and Angelina. They love each other soooooooooo much it makes me sick. I literally think the last words of the book are something like "I love you so much dear, what would I do without you?" and they all enjoy a good laugh like the last 9 seconds of your typical Scooby-Doo episode.
The main plot follows a derranged girl who picks up blonde guys, drugs them and brands "I am a snake" in their arm, all the while New York city is under a blackout, making things even more ridiculous. So perfect wife gathers the usual suspects along the way so they can save this poor blonde-guy from being slighlty uncofortable for a little while. Invigorating.
Do yourself a favor and don't read this book. Do your house a favor and don't bring this book inside of it.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Really enjoyed the book!
Review: Yes, CHC's books are a little far fetched. But I love them. I don't look for deep meanings, just read for enjoyment and entertainment. I started as a fan of her mother's writing and now I enjoy her style more. Love finding out what the character is up to next.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Believable plot? - no zappin' way!
Review: Having a thing for a good series, I looked forward to reading Carol Higgins Clark's mystery Zapped.
A mystery - and that's where everything starts: To me, a mystery shouldn't give away the all so important `whodunit' question after the first thirty pages. Besides that, Zapped has a few other flaws I can't ignore:
Clark's often colorful, but believable characters are way over the top.
Just one example: An aspiring actress, whose obnoxious behavior makes Paris Hilton look like Miss Congeniality, needs to break into her (owned by her soon to be ex-husband's) apartment to retrieve some nasty letters she'd written as therapy. Frantically she tries to recover those letters, which are written to people she despises, before someone finds them and ruins her career by sending them off.
Unfortunately for her the airline she used for her trip back from Europe lost her luggage, including her shoes.
The story is trying to convince me that in a city like New York, a woman can't possibly round up some sort of footwear after hours, and therefore is forced to be carried by her co-conspirator after she broke a heel of her pumps. Needless to say the actress, Lorraine Lily, nags and nags and nags some more.

The story grows flatter as I turn the pages. It just seems much too convenient that half of the cast knows each other and that doesn't leave any room for suspense or any unforeseen twists, which makes the continuance of the story predictable. But what drove me over the edge was how the female predator, an ominous gal named Georgina, uses her weapon on her victims. If I may, I'd like to quote from page 206:
"Georgina was heating up the branding iron with her lighter. The black metal was getting hotter and hotter. I'd have made a great girl scout, she thought, glancing at the words on the brand - I AM A SNAKE."
Psychologically damaged, thanks to her cheating ex-boyfriend, Georgina uses a branding iron to brand her victims. Okay - let's just pretend it's believable that a cheating boyfriend in college can drive a woman to such measures later in life; she drugs guys who resemble her ex and then the story really gets ridiculous: Georgina uses a cigarette lighter to heat up a piece of metal not only large enough to spell out an entire sentence, but also HOT enough to brand this sentence permanently into her victim's flesh.

Truthfully, I have to cut Clark some slack because I very much enjoyed some of her other work, but I'm not sure what happened when she wrote Zapped. Despite the fact that the dialogue was boring, most of the characters unreal, and the plot hair-raisingly silly, I still give it three stars because Clark took me on a very descriptive journey through the dark streets of New York City during a black-out. Also, I liked the way she arranged the timeline in short and snappy chapters.

On a personal note; though a mystery is fiction, believability is a huge issue for me and Zapped clearly lacked believability right from the start.
And by the way: girl scouts don't use lighters.
Rebecca Lerwill, author of Relocating Mia

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