Overview
When Emma Kane turns up dead in her mansion on the Main Line, no one is free from suspicion, least of all her husband of twenty-five years, New York media mogul Jack Kane. Too many people would love to see Kane out of business permanently, including a nemesis whose dealings with Kane rival the Murdoch-Turner conflict. Kate McCusker is a true-crime writer whose first book made all the bestseller lists and became a hit movie. But in the time since, she's lost her husband, and his ex-wife has come back from South America to claim their child - a boy who thought of Kate as his mother. With her personal life falling apart, Kate struggles to get her feet back on the ground - and the Kane murder promises to be just the thing to turn her life around. When Kate arrives on the scene - to tag along with investigators and help uncover Emma's murderer - Jack Kane takes her in as an ally, personally and professionally. Though his empire is crumbling, Kane offers the crime writer a chance at stardom. But Kate quickly learns that she's not the only woman whose career has been boosted by Kane's largesse. And those women aren't talking.Synopsis
When Emma Kane turns up dead in her mansion on the Main Line, no one is free from suspicion, least of all her husband of twenty-five years, New York media mogul Jack Kane. Too many people would love to see Kane out of business permanently, including a nemesis whose dealings with Kane rival the Murdoch-Turner conflict. Kate McCusker is a true-crime writer whose first book made all the bestseller lists and became a hit movie. But in the time since, she's lost her husband, and his ex-wife has come back from South America to claim their child - a boy who thought of Kate as his mother. With her personal life falling apart, Kate struggles to get her feet back on the ground - and the Kane murder promises to be just the thing to turn her life around. When Kate arrives on the scene - to tag along with investigators and help uncover Emma's murderer - Jack Kane takes her in as an ally, personally and professionally. Though his empire is crumbling, Kane offers the crime writer a chance at stardom. But Kate quickly learns that she's not the only woman whose career has been boosted by Kane's largesse. And those women aren't talking.
Kirkus Reviews
Where's the gun? Merion County investigators wonder when Emma Kane, the bullying, promiscuous wife of even more obsessively philandering WorldMedia News president Jack Kane, is shot to death—together with a hunky law student who moonlights as a male stripper—at the Main Line estate she still maintains even though Jack's decamped for New York. Only one person knows where the gun is: geeky Channel 7 news tech Lewis Terrenzio, determined to avenge himself on Jack Kane by breaking into the homes of Jack's former lovers, a lineup of Jessica Savitch wannabe newsanchors (in an especially tasteful touch, Lewis turns out to have been hounding real-life anchor Savitch herself), and forcing them at knifepoint to strip for a get-Jack videotape Lewis is making. Elm (Scandal, not reviewed) shows Lewis's high- tech Peeping Tom act getting him wildly past his depth when the night he picks to spy on Emma Kane and Tony Salerno is the very night they get shot. Now he's got not only the murder weapon (flung at his departing car by the killer), but a shadowy video of the perp, which he's about as likely to take to the cops as he is to be anointed the next Jessica Savitch. So it's up to bestselling crime reporter Kate McCusker to follow the tangle of blonds, erotomaniac fixations, and eleventh-hour secrets in order to unveil the killer—if the killer doesn't wipe out Kate's fragile family first. Glossy telemovie fodder, with Kate's interpolated transmutations of the case to the formulas of true-crime romance indistinguishable from Elm's own rolling periods.