When She Was Bad
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Chantal is the ultimate femme fatale, the deadly siren of every man’s dreams and nightmares. A ruthless—and beautiful—black widow, she seduces and destroys those around her. To her lover, Dan Stark, she promises paradise and more. But as her web descends, he must decide his role—one of her victims . . . or her killer.
Christine Terry is rescued after spending 19 days in the Caribbean on a life raft, then mysteriously escapes from the hospital before she can be questioned about the wreck and disappearance of the yacht she was on—and its owners. Cynical but likable reporter Dan Stark is suspicious but obsessed, and soon finds that she is absolutely nothing that she pretends to be. He agrees to help her retrieve a fortune in stolen emeralds from the sunken boat, but when she abandons him on an empty atoll, he vows revenge. Soon, like Chantal (her real name), he learns to change himself and his appearance to fit the situations he meets in pursuit of her. After more than one dangerous engagement with her over the next several years, he discovers a much more personal reason for tracking her down to a final confrontation. . . .
“Told in simple, unembellished prose, the story grips and entices, eventually leading to a smashing denouement.”
—Library Journal
“A writer of enormous talent, a stylist to admire and a storyteller of great power.”
—Scott Turow, author of Presumed Innocent
“Faust writes beautifully . . . he reminds you of Hemingway and Peter Matthiessen. . . . Faust has it all: lyrical prose, complex characters and provocative plots.”
—Booklist
“Faust’s clear, unadorned prose and his deft, pure characterization ring with the force of Hemingway or Graham Greene.”
—Publishers Weekly
Ron Faust was the award-winning author of 15 novels, all thrillers, including the bestseller In the Forest of the Night. Many of his novels have been optioned for film. He died in 2011.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
One man's obsession with a world-class femme fatale powers this fast-running but unreliable thriller by the author of In the Forest of the Night . Local reporter Dan Stark meets the woman of his dreams--and nightmares--when shipwreck survivor Christine Terry is brought ashore to the Florida Keys. Narrator Dan, an impetuous sort, falls hard for both the self-possessed beauty and her tale of a fortune in emeralds that sank with the sailboat that was ferrying her from Colombia to Miami. Quitting his job, Dan sails with Christine to recover the gems, only to see his fantasy voyage of sun and sex shattered when, the emeralds found, Christine maroons him on a reef, from which he's rescued by a passing ship. Seven years later, Dan, still under Christine's spell despite realizing that she killed the sailboat's owner and nearly did him in, too, tracks her to Aspen, where she's the cocaine kingpin of high ski society. Disguised as a crude but savvy drug lord, he deals his way to Christine in order to extract a brutal revenge, a tit-for-tat pattern that continues over the years, with vengeance pursued by shooting, arson, fraud and attempted drowning. Christine usually gets the upper hand, but Dan, whose mutation from victim to avenger is unconvincing, always comes back for more, like a punch-drunk palooka. Throughout, Faust's prose is as smooth and bright as a sunlit mirror. At first, the pair's wicked tanglings grip, but by novel's end the combat seems more like slapstick than suspense, a dead-end for Faust's prodigious, if here misdirected, talent.
