The Suitor
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Saved from a mugger, a young woman runs into the arms of a madman
On her way to meet a friend for lunch at a Mexican restaurant in a seedy part of downtown Denver, Valerie Rowe gets tackled from behind. When she's back on her feet, her purse is gone, and the teenager who took it is sprinting down the street. She chases after him, but knows it's hopeless—right until her mugger runs into Leonard. This quiet young man refuses a reward for retrieving her purse, but accepts an invitation to lunch. Though she doesn't know it, Valerie's moment of politeness could prove fatal.
Leonard never talks to girls besides his mother, and no one so beautiful as Valerie has ever even looked at him before. Instantly in love, he begins courting her obsessively, graduating quickly from love notes and flowers to arson and, perhaps, murder. He is fixated on Valerie, and will allow no law to stand in his way.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This formulaic suspense thriller will disappoint fans of the Shamus award-winning author (for Death on the Rocks ) of the Jake Lomax series. Divorced artist Valerie Rowe invites bashful, socially inept Leonard Tully to lunch after he gets her purse back from a mugger. Valerie, with a cute eight-year-old son, a burgeoning career, a nurturing new lover and a pushy friend who owns an art gallery, has a full, satisfying life. Leonard has a van, a crippled and controlling mother, repressed sexual urges--and now, he believes, someone to love him. Little in the novel's characterization or plotting will surprise readers--all this is quite familiar, from the dangers that threaten Valerie, little Matthew and their friends to Leonard's cabin in the woods where events culminate. Allegretto moves his cardboard characters along predictable paths, demonstrating a measured prose style but no bravura.
