Overview
It's midnight, and Ariel Gold has just arrived on Kiawah Island, a few miles southeast of Charleston, South Carolina. She's come to her grandfather's home for a break from L.A. - from gridlock and drive-by shootings and tremors - and from a problem that is uniquely her own: she is struggling to recover from a total and devastating memory loss. But the weekend will not be the restful hiatus she imagined. Late at night on a deserted stretch of beach, a chance meeting opens a door to the past she seeks. The stranger appears from nowhere, and is stunned to encounter Ariel; he's mistaken her for her sister, whom he's known since childhood - and who he knows is dead. He tells Ariel of their special friendship and, in the telling, reveals himself to be a troubled man, haunted by demons at which Ariel can only guess. Then, as suddenly as he appeared, he vanishes into the night. She couldn't know their brief exchange would pull her into a spiral of tainted old Southern money and family scandal with all the force of a coastal hurricane. For Ariel, following in her sister's shadow is both eerie and compelling, as she digs into the stranger's past in the hope she might learn more about her own. But the deeper she delves into a chilling legacy of high drama, low jealousies and bad blood, Ariel finds the truth can be twisted - and memories can be murder.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
In this intriguing if tangled sequel to Fast Forward, Los Angeles TV news magazine producer Ariel Gold is still struggling to assimilate the fact that she had an identical twin, Jane, who died only recently. While visiting her newly discovered biological grandfather, charming businessman B.F. Coulter, on Kiawah Island, S.C., Ariel is accosted on the beach one night by a man who mistakes her for Jane. A few days later, the distraught stranger, identified as John William Barron, a famous painter's son, turns up dead, an apparent suicide. When John William's half-sister is killed in a car crash, his mother, who was driving, becomes a suspect in his death. Meanwhile, back in L.A., Ariel's crusty boss, Henry Heller, is investigating the disappearance of Grant Lacy, a socially awkward genius who founded a computer company and whose beautiful wife stands to benefit enormously from his death. As Ariel and Henry compare notes, discovering similar strains of adultery and deceit in both stories, their own relationship begins to blossom into romance. Their clever banter and Ariel's penchant for quoting writers from Dickens to Wilde add savor to this thriller. The double plot is needlessly complicated, however, and a set of unconvincing revelations at the end may leave readers feeling betrayed. Moreover, while Ariel and Henry are appealing characters, the fact that they have little personal stake in their investigationsbeyond a journalistic eye for truthmakes their discoveries hard to care about. (July)Library Journal
In her sequel to Fast Forward (LJ 4/1/95), Mercer sets in motion two plots of intrigue on opposite sides of the country. Ariel Gold, an amnesiac who discovers that she has a twin only after the twin is murdered, visits her deceased sister's guardian, B.F., in Kiawah, Georgia, where, at the same time, the suicide of native John William Barron casts new light on his famous painter father's suicide of years before. In California, Ariel's boss, Henry, uncovers disturbing facts about the disappearance of a successful businessman, while Ariel, snooping in Kiawah, gets caught up in both mysteries. Unfortunately, the reader cannot do the same. Replete with implausible character convolutions and a turbid layering of motives, the story lacks coherence and credibility. Not recommended.Michelle Foyt, Fairfield P.L., Ct.Kirkus Reviews
Mercer's second Ariel Gold thriller has a fetching cast and an ingenious plot device. True tension is the only missing element in this promising series.In Fast Forward (1995), Ariel Gold lost her memory in a Los Angeles explosion that coincidentally killed her twin sister Jane—a sister Ariel didn't know she had. While coping with her amnesia, Ariel, who was raised separately from Jane by unloving adoptive parents, mysteriously became transformed into the person she might have been had she been raised in a good home. She lost 30 pounds, did better at her job as a producer for an investigative TV show called Open File, started using makeup, and became outgoing and confident. So changed did she become in fact that her thrice- divorced boss, Henry Heller, who had never given her a second glance, is now in love with her; and her new-found grandfather, a wealthy southerner, is showering her with attention. This second installment begins near his house on Kiawah Island in South Carolina, where Ariel meets John William Barron, an old friend of Jane's, who is discovered the following day dead of carbon-monoxide poisoning in what is supposedly a suicide. Because of John William's connection to her sister, Ariel investigates the mysterious circumstances of his death and the gothic goings-on of his scandal-ridden Charleston family (his father was also supposedly a suicide), while on the other coast Henry takes care of her dogs and conducts his own inquiries into the disappearance of a computer genius, the founder of MicroStar. The dual mysteries, solved in interweaving chapters, work against the build-up of suspense in either one, and an attempt to bring an L.A. villain to South Carolina never becomes integrated into the story.
No page-turner, but Mercer nevertheless is a bright author with a fine sense of humanity and some ideas that may very well mature.