From Publishers Weekly
Acceptable as a substitute for daytime soap opera viewing, if nothing else, this contemporary romantic thriller fails to live up to favorite Adler titles like Peach and Fortune Is a Woman. Heavy on the romance and light on the thrills, the writer's 13th novel is all lather and featherweight intrigue. Ed Vincent, a real estate tycoon with a mysterious past, has been shot by a would-be assassin and lies comatose in a New York hospital. His love interest, Georgia peach Melba Merrydew, also a target, comes to grieve by Ed's bedside. Enter Marco Camelia, a handsome homicide detective, who, with Melba's help, investigates Ed's shadowy past, all the while falling in lust with Melba's Southern charm and sun-kissed legs. The one-dimensional characters are modeled not on real-life counterparts but on their movie star prototypes (Adler reminds the reader a number of times that Melba looks like Sharon Stone and Marco is a ringer for Pacino, while Ed owns a building named Vincent Towers, la Trump Tower). The slow-moving, clich -ridden tale is not rescued by the action-packed finaleDtoo little, too late. Even Adler's fans may find her latest outing uninspiring, although chances are they'll go along for the ride; but Adler won't pick up many new readers based on this title. (Dec.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an alternate
Hardcover
edition.
From Booklist
Adler's latest thriller offers a clever twist on an old theme. Millionaire Ed Vincent is nearly killed by four bullets to the chest. As Vincent's lover, Zelda Merrydew, helps a charming homicide detective investigate the attempted murder, she uncovers things about the man she loves that he'd rather she didn't know. Adler's enjoyable characters and lively dialogue alone wouldn't quite overcome this tired premise. But there's one other thing that makes the novel different: Ed Vincent himself, lying in the hospital, unable to communicate in any way, is a principal character in the story. Like Dalton Trumbo's classic
Johnny Got His Gun, Adler's novel features scenes in which the reader is inside a man's mind, feeling the helplessness of wanting desperately to cry out while being utterly unable to make a sound. Vincent is an immensely sympathetic character, and he turns this otherwise typical novel of buried secrets into something special.
David PittCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to an alternate
Hardcover
edition.
