Snowstorms in a Hot Climate
A Novel
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Marla’s best friend, Elly, left England two years ago on a soul-searching trip through South America. Except for receiving a few postcards, Marla has not heard from her since. Then, Marla receives a strange letter from Elly begging her to fly to New York. But the person Marla meets at the airport is a very different woman from the strong, carefree friend she remembers. Elly, now well-dressed and thin, has acquired a park-view apartment, a house in the Hamptons, and a charismatic, manipulative, cocaine-smuggling boyfriend named Lenny.
As Marla tries to free her friend from the dual addictions of love and cocaine, she unravels a story of seduction and power in Columbia and of desire and betrayal in California. Caught in a web of deceptions, the threat of violence mounting around them, Marla decides to take on Lenny and his empire. But Lenny–like the drug he peddles–has no intention of letting Elly go.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
It's unusual to find a credible friendship between women blended into the pages of a tightly written thriller, but Dunant's first novel rises well above the genre's watermark. A shaky summons from her estranged friend Elly draws Marla from the cool reaches of an English summer to the humid streets of New York. A determinedly dusty academic, Marla doesn't expect to outshine exotic Elly, but the woman who meets her at the airport is a washed-out version of her once vibrant schoolmate. After globetrotting for several seasons, Elly has hooked up with a strikingly attractive, charismatic liar named Lennie, who lives for the high he gets from cocaine, which he smuggles and deals. Initially, their affair energized Elly; now she has sunk into a slough of drug-induced despair, from which her lover refuses to lift a hand to save her. With grim relish, Marla prepares to battle for Elly's soul, encouraging her to take refuge at the California estate of Lennie's enigmatic ex-partner, J.T. What follows is an intricate psychological chess game that escalates to murder. Sharp-edged humor, a devious, neo-Gothic plot that twists back on itself and a lust for revenge impel the novel to its inexorable finale.
