From Amazon.com
Network correspondent Cassie Sheridan, a rising star at KEY's Washington bureau, is exiled to the Miami office after her ambitions overpower her common sense and she identifies a victim of the Clown Rapist as the daughter of the head of the FBI. Not only is her career on the skids, but her private life's also a mess, and meanwhile, there's nothing more newsworthy happening than a hurricane warning on Florida's west coast. Then an 11-year-old boy with a metal detector discovers the remains of a dead porn star on a Siesta Key beach. She's wearing a ruby ring that's too tempting a treasure to turn over to the police, but what young Vincent Bayler doesn't know is that it's also an item that at least one upstanding local citizen would do anything to keep from being traced back to him--including kidnapping Vincent's seriously ill brother to convince him to return the ring, and getting Cassie off his trail--permanently. This is a well-crafted but predictable thriller by Clark, whose fictional network (and its anything-for-a-story reporters) couldn't possibly bear more than a fleeting and coincidental resemblance to CBS, where she's been a writer and producer for many years--or could it?
--Jane Adams
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
CBS News writer and producer Clark (Close to You) returns with a fast-paced but superficial page-turner featuring a down-on-her-luck newswoman and a precocious young boy. Cassie Sheridan's career is flourishing until she reveals on national TV that a serial rapist attacked the FBI director's daughter; the girl commits suicide and Cassie is demoted to a post in Sarasota, Fla. Estranged from her family, she's stuck reporting on hurricanes. But there's another storm brewing: young Vincent Baylor finds a human hand on the beach and takes a ring from the finger, figuring the money will help his overworked mom and sick little brother, but the killer (who also happens to be the rapist) wants the ring back and will kill again to get it. It turns out there were loads of men who might have wanted to harm the victim, porn star Marilee Qui¤ones, including the smarmy manager of a boy band, an antisocial eye doctor and one of her co-stars. Cassie strikes up a friendship with Vincent that puts her in the path of the killer as a hurricane heads up the coast. Though the plot is brisk and absorbing, it's a bit facile overall and Clark is too heavy-handed with the red herrings. Worse yet, everything is weighed down by cliches and a slack prose style, as evidenced by a profusion of lines like "Yep, life could turn on a dime."
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
