From Publishers Weekly
Best-selling romantic thriller author Adler (Now or Never; Sooner or Later) trots out a pair of lovebirds on the trail of a serial killer in her 12th novel. Hollywood Hills private investigator Al Giraud hails from New Orleans's wrong side of the tracks; a tough-talking dick, he's as much a lover as a sleuth. Marla Cwitowitz is the gorgeous 30-something lawyer who's crazy about him and, after wheedling Al to give her assistant PI status, becomes his partner both on and off the job. They are a stereotypically mismatched couple: Al asks high-class law professor Marla, "What the hell d'ya see in me? An uneducated bum, an ex-cop, a two-bit P.I.? A lovely woman like you?" But Marla adores his street smarts, dinner conversation, and lovemaking skills, and she's thrilled at the thought of working with her man investigating murders. The trouble begins when a real estate agent, California golden girl Laurie Martin, disappears. Burly detective Lionel Bulworth and his brazen assistant Pamela "Pow!" Powers believe Laurie's client Steve MallardAwhose job is forcing him to relocate his Los Angeles-based family to San DiegoAis the guilty party. None too coincidentally, Al and Marla happened to notice Laurie and Steve together before the alleged murder. As far as they could tell, Laurie and Steve were not romantically involved, which does away with the cops' theory that Steve killed Laurie in a jealous rage. Steve's wife, the level-headed Vicki, hires Al and Marla to prove her husband's guilt or innocence. Inevitably, they tangle with the killer, and everyone's melodramatic gamble is the inspiration for the title clich?. Occasionally evocative imagery counteracts irritating and incessant brand name-dropping and superficial characterizations. (Dec.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Adler (Sooner or Later, 1997, etc.) may have moved from cream-stuffed romance to sensuously creamy suspense, but she's still heavy on the gardenia scent and crushed velvet. Retired New Orleans homicide detective Al Giraud is now a private investigator in L.A., where law professor and ex-DA Marla Cwitowitz falls for him and decides she wants to be a p.i. tooAl's partner, in fact. The couple trade a ton of martinis and Nick-and-Nora sexual badinage, but never in a Dashiell Hammett mystery does a tanned p.i. wear an ``ankle-length silk jersey skirt slit to the thigh, and a tiny white chiffon top embroidered with pale green butterflies. In a La Jolla bar, Al and Marla see Laurie Martin, a tall, unmarried, blond realtor with good legs and a gold snake ring, pushing a Laguna Beach seaside house on electronics executive Steve Mallard. He may be married, but Mallard looks like a dead duck after dining with Laurie for two weeks in a fruitless search for the right house. When Laurie disappears and her car is found with blood on the backseat, Steve is the prime suspect. He hires Al and Marla to find Lauries missing body and exonerate him. Later, dogs sniff out a body at the bottom of a canyon near where the bloody car was found. What tie did or does Laurie Martin have to Bonnie Victor, other than owning the same dog? Is Laurie Martin even Laurie Martin? When Marla and Steves wife, Vickie, are attacked with a knife in the Mallards kitchen, will Vickie emerge from the resulting coma? The climax is a literal cliffhangerpresumably because villains no longer tie heroines to the railroad tracks. Call this film noir on silk sheets. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
