ENEMY WITHIN
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Thirty years ago, a woman accused of murdering her husband placed her newborn daughter on a convent's steps, then staged her own death. She leaves behind a mystery that would return three decades later to rock the family…
When Rachel Spaulding inherits her family's Napa Valley vineyard, it's a dream come true for the adopted daughter of loving parents. But her legacy is greeted with bitter hatred by her siser, Annie, who vows to do whatever it takes to discredit Rachel and claim the Spaulding vineyards for herself. And Annie begins by hiring a detective to dig into Rachel's past.
This was supposed to be a routine investigation, but P.I. Gregory Show realizes too late he's been used. When the information he uncovers for Annie leads to the reopening of a sensational murder case, he can't walk away. Especially when he feels responsible for the pain it's causing Rachel Spaulding.
But even Gregory is unaware of the danger emerging from three decades of deceit. And even he can't recognize the enemy within who knows there is only one way to lock the door of the past forever. Murder.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in California's Napa Valley, this romantic suspense novel features Rachel Spaulding, a woman who inherits her adoptive family's winery against the wishes of their natural daughter, Annie. Vindictive Annie sets dangerous events in motion when she hires private investigator Gregory Shaw, who unearths an old scandal--the murder of Rachel's father and the disappearance of her birth mother--inadvertently flushing out the true murderer. Shaw, once the object of Rachel's teenage crush (now totally persona non grata), must keep Rachel out of harm's way, even as he falls deeply in love with her. Unfortunately, this intriguing, promising plot is sapped by distracting secondary characters, proliferating subplots and a surfeit of red herrings. The poignant human story at the core, which describes the relationship of a mother and daughter who each thought the other dead, only to discover each other anew, peters out until it becomes almost inconsequential. Though Heggan's (Trust No One) dialogue is for the most part skillful, sustaining suspense here proves problematic.
