The Stepmother: A Novel [Hardcover]

Diana Diamond (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 30, 2005

When Steven Armstrong tells his children he has fallen in love, he expects them to be happy that his life as a lonely, sixty-five year old widower is over. Instead their father's intended thirty-three year old personal trainer Charlene Hendricks is exactly the kind of woman they fear. Through marriage she becomes not only the stepmother to his three grown children, but their rival for their father's world class fortune. Suddenly an attack is made on her life. All the children are suspect,but which one has the best motive? Then a second attack backfires and mistakenly kills her husband, making the stepmother a wealthy heiress. Now, it is the children who accuse her of murdering their father. Only by finding the real killer can she prove her innocence.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Very good entertainment."
-Publishers Weekly on The First Wife
"Diana Diamond's gripping thriller takes sibling rivalry to a whole new level"
-Marie Claire on The Good Sister
"A gripping page-turner."
-People (Beach Book of the Week) on The Trophy Wife
"A must read."
-Women's Own on The Trophy Wife

From the Back Cover

SOMEONE IS WATCHING…
Sixty-five-year-old multi-millionaire Steven Armstrong tells his three children that he is going to re-marry. But his new bride isn't the stepmother they have in mind. Charlene "Charlie" Hendricks is his vivacious, thirty-five-year-old personal trainer, the single-mother of a teen-age daughter. To Steven's midlife children, she is nothing but a gold digger…

SOMEONE IS PLOTTING…
Days before her wedding, Charlie, training for a triathlon, decides to go for a swim in the Atlantic Ocean. Out of nowhere, a mysterious figure on a speeding Jet Ski shows up, making an attempt on her life. The children head the list of suspects--but which one plotted her death?

SOMEONE IS READY TO KILL…
Then, after the wedding, a second attack backfires and mistakenly kills her husband, making Charlie a wealthy heiress. Now it is the children who accuse her of murdering their father. Is Charlie a ruthless fortune hunter, or the innocent victim of her husband's greedy heirs?

"Genuine nail-biting moments."
--RT BOOKclub Magazine

"Demands to be read in one sitting."
--Newmysteryreader.com

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (June 30, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312337272
• ISBN-13: 978-0312337278
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,492,042 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars strong amateur sleuth thriller, July 5, 2005

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Stepmother: A Novel (Hardcover)

In Florida, wealthy sixty-five years old Steven Armstrong underwent knee replacement surgery and subsequent therapy. He soon falls in love with his physical therapist thirty-three years old Charlene "Charlie" Hendricks, who raises a young teen Tara by herself. He informs his son Matthew, who replaced him on the board of Ucandoit, a chain of hardware warehouses that he plans to ask Charlie to marry him. Matthew tells his two siblings; Hollywood actor Gary and art show sponsor Trish.

Realizing marrying a kind older man would help her daughter, Charlie accepts. However, someone is unhappy with her marrying the self made millionaire and tries to kill Charlie, but fails. A second attempt ends tragically with Steven dead and the police suspecting the new rich widow. She is unable to sit idly by while suspecting one of her step children is trying to kill her. To save herself, Charlie investigates the homicide assuming that she was the target not Steven in spite of evidence to the contrary.

Though the title seems like a poor B movie and the premise seems unlikely that at least one of the adult professional children would turn to murder, readers will appreciate this strong amateur sleuth thriller that grips fans with surprising twists. The story line is fast-paced from the first attempt to kill Charlie and never slows down until the final twist that will stun the audience. The key to this diamond of a tale is that like Charlie readers will believe one of Steven's children is the killer, but which one makes for a fine tale.

Harriet Klausner

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good story but full of typos, April 19, 2007

By 

K. Atchley "proofreader" (Fort Worth, Texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Stepmother (Audio CD)

Author and/or publishing company could use a proofreader, one who knows the difference between "desert" and "dessert" and "draws" and "drawers," among other punctuation errors. Good story, but as a proofreader, I can't help but be distracted (and disappointed) by all the typos.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Starts of Well Then Gets a Bit Unrealistic and Predictable, February 28, 2007

By 

James N Simpson (Gold Coast, QLD Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Stepmother: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)

I've read four of the seven novels that William P Kennedy has published under his female pen name Diana Diamond. Novels that substantially vary in quality from book to book. The Stepmother is certainly no masterpiece, it does get pretty unrealistic in parts and you'll see the twist at the end coming about half way through the book but it is an enjoyable quick read that will pass a few hours if you need something to pass the time and there's nothing better to read on the shelf.

Much better novels are out there to actually spend your money on about children who do not want to see their mum/dad marry someone else and plan on doing whatever they can to get the new person out of their lives. Twisted Minds by Hilary Norman and the masterpiece Mother's Boys by Bernard Taylor are the two best of this terrifying genre that I've read.

However if Diana Diamond books are what you are after and you are looking for somewhere to start with this author I would recommend The Trophy Wife as Kennedy's best work under his Diana Diamond Pseudonym. It's the best of the four that I've read.

In The Stepmother, Charlene Hendricks, a physiotherapist is struggling to provide as high a quality of life as she can afford for herself and her 13 year old teenage daughter. She counts herself lucky at the moment that her latest client 65 year old millionaire Steven Armstrong treats her well, allows her to be flexible with her time so that she can pick up her kid from school and has an excellent home that she has the run of which is of course her workplace. She knows though that he has completely recovered from his knee surgery and will soon be back in shape and that she will be shown the door soon enough. When the dreaded talk comes she is completely surprised to find out he has fallen in love with her and wants her to marry him.

Seeing it as a way to a better life for her daughter and herself as well as realising the fact that although she is half his age she isn't getting any younger herself, she decides that she is unlikely to ever find true love and that this situation is not a bad consolation prize. Who knows she may grow to love him with time.

Stephen's spoilt grown up children however see right through her, as they can see she's just like them, only interested in their father's wealth and not his love. They don't plan on sharing or having her influence her father's decisions to keep their projects afloat. They make plans to get her out of the picture one way or the other. However plans don't seem to be going as smoothly as they had hoped, the wrong person dies in a planned accident which non of them are admitting to each other they were behind. They decide the best thing to do is tell the authorities their father confided in them that Charlene was out to get him and his money so it's not long before she's up on murder charges. The only way Charlene can beat prison and the public opinion that will affect her daughter's future is to find out who is actually behind the murder.