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
Balancing compelling characters and intricate plotting in her trademark beach read style, Clark's suspense-filled latest finds 39-year-old television reporter Cassie Sheridan wracked with guilt over her part in a young rape victim's suicide. Named in a wrongful death suit and demoted to the Miami bureau after 15 years as a Washington, D.C., power player, Cassie rues the sacrifices that cost her her marriage and her relationship with her teenage daughter. While covering an impending hurricane, the newswoman befriends Vincent, a latchkey 11-year-old who's just discovered a severed hand on the sandy shores of Siesta Key. The author's own background as a writer and producer at CBS News, paired with reader Tunno's convincing rendition of downtrodden Cassie, imparts vocational verisimilitude. Tunno also skillfully narrates the na‹ve Vincent, who steals a ring from the corpse to help his impoverished family and unwittingly puts himself and Cassie in the path of a serial killer whose M.O. includes wearing a grease paint clown mask. But despite the professional unabridged recording and fast pacing, translation to audio doesn't fair as well when Tunno is called on to voice a pornography mogul or the killer; she's unable to capture the grittier, masculine aspects of the book.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
