I.O.U.

Jenny Cain #7

by Nancy Pickard

Pickard's sixth Jenny Cain mystery and first Pocket Books hardcover, Bum Steer, was widely acclaimed by critics and readers alike. Now, in I.O.U., Jenny explores her own family's unsettling, mysterious past, beginning with her mother's death--was it murder?

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Cozy Mystery, Cozy, Crime, American

240 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published March 1, 1992

About the author

Nancy Pickard is an American crime novelist. She received a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri and began writing at age 35.

She has won five Macavity Awards, four Agatha Awards, an Anthony Award, and a Shamus Award. She is the only author to win all four awards. Her novel The Virgin of Small Plains, published in 2007, won an Agatha Award. She also served on the board of directors of the Mystery Writers of America.

Reviews

[skein · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a mystery novelist, Pickard is very strange. Her books don't have lot of whodunnit?! plot - but the character of her protagonist is central to the stories - especially this one, which features absolutely no murder at all.
Out of all the mystery novels from all the authors my mother brought home, Nancy Pickard was my favorite, and this my favorite book of hers. Re-reading the series as an adult impresses me even more. Most serial mysteries are (let's face it) feature thinly drawn characters thrown into improbable situations over and over and over again. They're easy to read and presumably easy to write, and that's all part of the enjoyment. They aren't there to be taken Seriously. Pickard takes this cheap potboiler form and makes it ... worthwhile.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read many of Nancy Pickard's cozies and remember that I really liked her writing style, never got bored or lost. I had I.O.U on my to be read since 1991.

This particular book centers not on an investing a murder but her mother's death and her father's loss of a business that been in the family for generations. Jenny Cain displays an overload of emotional reactions to people's statements and actions. This does not happen in most cozies!. I struggled to get through the first three chapters. I almost stopped reading! But later in the book, her therapist who was also a close childhood friend advised that she was not crazy and that what she needed to do was to investigate what was bothering her as if it was and actual case. That calmed both her and the book down. Hooray!

Not being close to her father was her father's long lasting affair that resulted in marrying a woman only a few years older than her. Her step mother was voluptous, always had a irritating, calming positive attitude. Her sister had a bad effect on her too, there was a time that they actually came to blows.

I enjoyed her investigation of her mother's life and the downfall her father's business downfall. There are times that you think that the evil doer has been found but there you find out that there are more people connected with the bad results. The investigation leads to complex situations.

I really enjoyed this mystery and hope to read many more of her books.

[Stephen Brayton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Plot

The layered plot of the latest in the excellent Jenny Cain series finds the Port Frederick, Mass., sleuth probing the cause of her recently deceased mother’s insanity. Cain discovers that her mother’s mental collapse many years before coincided with the bankruptcy of the family business. The closing of Cain Clams created considerable unemployment locally and countless enemies for the Cains–one such foe may now be trying to prevent the amateur detective from delving further into her family’s past and the town’s secrets. As she tracks down public mysteries, Cain unearths painful personal issues; an attempt on her life, construed as an effort at suicide, forces her to deal with the legacy of her mother’s madness. Pickard masterfully resolves both plot lines in this affecting, provocative novel centering around the mystery at the heart of mother-daughter relationships.

My Analysis

First, a short story of my own. I had read Pickard’s novels for many years before I attended a conference in Chicago where she was one of the guest authors. I had enjoyed the books I’d read, so bought about nine more and asked her for autographs. She obliged. I think it was one of my first meeting, if not the first, of a well-known, published author.

As for I.O.U., this looked different than her other Cain mysteries and it was. This was deeper, darker, more serious. The others are serious, too, but not as much.

I found the writing very well done. Long sentences to express Jenny’s mood and show the atmosphere of scenes. Internal monologues and dialogues.

At first, I wondered why Jenny waited until her mother’s funeral to decide she needed to find answers. Her mother had been in the hospital for a long time. Why wasn’t Jenny determined to find answer before the mother died?

Right away, you find people harbor secrets, which is normal for mysteries. This, however, draws in the reader to be as determined as Jenny to find the answers. Every person she interviews has secrets and characteristics that reveal their true selves. From the sister to the father, to the Father, to the nurse, to the businessmen, to the newspaper publisher. Pickard has written this story so the reader, at least this reader, ends up disliking everyone and rooting for Jenny and Geoff, the last two survivors in this town of a lot of people who wished they would go away.

It’s an awful story in the sense of portraying this woman’s life. Yes, Jenny rises above it all in the end, but I think from this point on, she’ll have an upward battle to “come back” to a sense of normalcy.

It’s a wonderfully written story with strength and danger (yes, there’s still a mystery here to be solved and an attempted murder suspect to be found), and I found myself immersed in the depth of it all. I didn’t know where it was headed. Pickard did a great job of showing a lot of truth in various areas of life. From religion to medical practice to business practices.

I thought about the normal blue belt rank for this, but I think I’ll bump it up one rank to:

Brown Belt

[Jenny · Rating 2 out of 5]

I always like Jenny but this mystery was NOT GOOD. She finally uncovers what happened to her mom (what sent her into the psychiatric hospital) and her dad (why did his business fold?). The answers are (in order): her mom had a botched abortion at age 46 that sent her over the edge, and her dad's business was sabotaged by people he thought of as friends. Jenny is caught up in the old boys network everywhere. She ends up leaving her job, leaving Faye Basil in charge, and then gets attacked in her garage after driving home under the influence (of both beer and medication). Geof finally tracks down some clues but Jenny ultimately puts all the pieces together.

I sympathized with Jenny's mom - her husband is cheating on her, the family business is in danger of going bankrupt, she suffered from PPD and had few people who could help her. The one person who does, her doctor's nurse Marj, tries to help abort her baby but ends up endangering her and she needs a hysterectomy. Hence the "it was an accident, forgive me" that Jenny hears over her shoulder at her mom's funeral.

It just kind of ended with a fizzle. I am curious what she does next, but this book, running at 234 pages, was probably 75 pages too long, and even that might be a stretch. There was a lot about Jenny's family, her sister Sherry and her dad Jimmy and her stepmother Randy and her niece and nephew who try to help Jenny track down her stalker (Marj). There is a lot that is (hopefully) outdated with priests and outcry about modern art and abortion situations preventing you from being buried in the Catholic graveyard and old boys networks subjugating the smart women who work for them: "Because an old-boy network ... ruled my mother's life, she died. And so, she turned to the only person who offered to help, a woman, but one who was so warped by the sacrifice of her own ambitions and desires. And so they were both, my mother and Marjorie Earnshaw, female strangers in a strange male land."

[Sandra Strange · Rating 3 out of 5]

This addition to the series adds elements not normally part of this kind of mystery: the protagonist suffers a psychological breakdown at the death of her troubled mother. Her journey back to herself, solving the mystery as she works, involves investigating her mother and the source of her mother's long term journey into insanity and her father's disastrous bankruptcy.

[Kathe Forrest · Rating 2 out of 5]

Picard is a very detailed author but I felt too much detail. I wanted to get to the heart of the story so if you like rambling and reading about small mindedness in small towns this is the book for you.

[Lbaker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting, I look forward to reading more in this series.

[Jack Heath]

Synopsis: Jenny explores her own family's unsettling past, beginning with her mother's death - was it murder?

[Maija · Rating 3 out of 5]

suomennettuna Tytären velka

[Jill Frederickson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very, very dated. Recycled it because no one else needs to read this.

[Sheila · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this one! Jenny gets to the bottom of her mother's health and also has to deal with the old boys network.

[Regine]

Solid.

[Star Merrill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really loving this book, until the end, that is... It got too preachy for my taste. Authors should entertain, not preach. I go to church for that.

[Christine Lucia Asha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to re-read half this book, it was so complex and sad. But always worth reading Nancy Pickard.

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

#7 in the Jenny Cain mystery series. Jenny is the CEO of a charitable foundation in the fictional small town of Port Frederick, Mass. This is more a personal Jenny Cain story rather than the usual solve the murder mystery in previous novels. Opens with the burial service for Jenny's mother and Jenny's realization that she really doesn't know who her mother was and why she ended up for years in a nursing home for mentally unstable people. Jenny suffers a sort of mental break down and behaves very erratically and publicly doing very unJenny like things. She pulls herself out of by trying to discover why her mother suffered the mental collapse which hospitalized her and why her father's business suffered a business collapse. Finding out the "truth" about her family is this novel's mystery.

[Betty · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this 20 years ago and finally got around to reading it. I would have liked it then, but I was even more interested in how relevant the issues raised then still matter (women's roles, corporate greed, banking shenanigans). This book solves a mystery, but it doesn't involve stumbling over a dead body and tracking down a culprit. Frankly, I was relieved to be reading a mystery novel that wasn't trapped by the rules of the genre or larded with cliches. The protagonist actually has a happy marriage; the detective is not an alcoholic, to name a couple of examples. I think it's time to find out what Nancy Pickard has been doing recently. She a writer worth following.

[April Hochstrasser · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice little plot and a good attitude adjustment on the part of the daughter. A daughter starts out hating her mother because her mother had been in a psychiatric hospital for the last 20 years and the daughter didn't understand why. As she found little clues about the reasons, she changed her attitude and ended up at least understanding and feeling empathy for her mother. I only skipped a couple of boring paragraphs in this one. The rest was worth reading and I enjoyed getting back to it each time.

[Julie H. Ernstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this seventh installment in the series Jenny investigates parallel mysteries of both a personal family history and local town history nature. You get a good sense of Jenny, her family background, and insights into this likeable protagonist.

[Connie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Next in Jenny Cain series. Jenny's mother has died and she tries to find out why she was always in the mental health hospital. Her father and sister don't seem to know the answers so she interveiws people and tries to find out why. Her husband Geof and her have both lost their jobs in this one.

[Luz C. Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

By far, this is my favourite of the Jenny Cain series. After the Wild West, we are back in town. This novel is a shrine, an altar, a temple of exquisite feminism, of a lost mother, of a somehow lost father, and of a family’s Canned Clams loss. Why do feminist women always quit their jobs?

[Katherine Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for the monograph. I love Nancy Pickard's series so much. This book won the Agatha award 1991 for best novel. I love that Jenny Cain learns so much about herself. This is the mystery of Jenny and her family. Powerful stuff.

[Cws]

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[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been off mysteries for awhile, but may need to go back to them, now that I've found Pickard.

[Irene · Rating 4 out of 5]

different plot - but interesting. proves that you never know how many loved ones and friends are really supporting you when you are down and out (depressed and feeling lonely)..

[Toesnorth's mom]

stupid and ridiculous

[Kacy · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK - Not great, but a quick read.

[Rena · Rating 2 out of 5]

Political story more than mystery... Slow

[Charlene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found this on a thrift self--good summer afternoon read. We never know what our parent. child dynamics are.