To Trust a Stranger
-
- £4.99
-
- £4.99
Publisher Description
Karen Robards once again electrifes the page with hardwired passion and thrilling suspense in this heart-pounding novel.
Suspicion. It burned through every nerve and fiber of Julie Carlson—the heartbreaking, infuriating suspicion that her husband was having an affair. To the rest of the world, Sid Carlson was a wealthy contractor with friends in highly influential places. But to Julie, he was a man who had cheated on their marriage vow—and she knew she had to take desperate measures. Who can she trust? Heartbroken by her husband, Julie turns to a handsome stranger.
Mac McQuarry knew better than to mix women and work: the private detective had tracked enough cheating spouses to know unbridled desire usually has no good end. And he had enough trouble of his own: the disgraced former cop had been bumped way down to his current status after an explosive shakedown of the Charleston police department. But when Julie Carlson hires him, Mac can't resist. Not only is she drop-dead gorgeous, but her husband, a longtime enemy, was a player in Mac's inglorious downfall—and he'd love nothing more than to catch the corrupt jerk with his pants down, so to speak.
But what begins as a run-of-the-mill assignment spiced by a fiery flirtation with beautiful Julie suddenly spirals into a harrowing race for survival. Tracking the Carlsons' car down a lonely road one night, Mac witnesses an incredible hit that targeted Julie—and suddenly Mac and Julie have become the hunted. With the mob and the police in hot pursuit, they can rely only on each other as they crash their way through a maze of buried secrets and deadly deceptions.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The usual ingredients bubble and boil in Robards's latest romantic suspense thriller. Julie Carlson, once a poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks but now the beautiful owner of a successful boutique in Charleston, S.C., seems to have it all. As the novel begins, however, a hit man circles her suburban mansion: Julie's rich husband, Sid, has hired thugs to kill her. Unaware of the danger she is in but convinced that Sid is cheating on her, Julie slips out of the house just in time and follows her husband to the red-light district, where she serendipitously and literally runs into private detective Mac McQuarry, dressed up in drag to spy on a client's husband. Julie isn't sure whether she should trust a man in a dress, but she has no one else to turn to, and soon she and Mac are working together to get the goods on Julie's crooked husband. As it happens, Mac holds a personal grudge against Sid, a prominent builder in Charleston, because Sid was involved in the disappearance of Mac's half-brother 15 years before, and then got Mac kicked off the police force when Mac tried to prove it. Robards's fans will enjoy the machinations before Julie and Mac get together, though clich s clutter every page ("The truth hit him like a hammer over the head: He had a galloping case of the hots for his newest client, who was not incidentally his oldest enemy's wife"). Of course, true love solves past mysteries, while hot kisses get as much play as life-threatening confrontations. A bodice ripper at heart, the novel is the equivalent of a box of junk candy.
