Synopsis
New York book editor Maris Matherly-Reed knows a bestseller when she sees one -- even if it is a tantalizing partial manuscript submitted by a writer identified only as P.M.E., with the return address of an obscure island off the Georgia coast. Maris is intrigued enough to search for him.
Her trip to Georgia to meet the mysterious author takes her to an eerie, ruined cotton plantation, where Maris finds Parker Evans, a man confined to a wheelchair who carefully hides his past. Coaxing his novel from him chapter by chapter, Maris gets caught up in his tale of two friends who rent a boat with a young woman for a night of sex and drinking. Only one person will return from that trip.
Disturbed about her sexual attraction to Parker and worried about her marriage to author and her co-publisher Noah Reed, Maris returns to New York where the delivery of Parker's newest chapters convince her they are more than fiction. She wonders how well she knows her husband and begins a harrowing...
Publishers Weekly
Style and form are usually the least of prolific bestselling romance/thriller writer Brown's concerns, but in her latest effort she takes on an unusual challenge, setting out to craft a novel within a novel within a novel. The onion begins to peel when editor Maris Matherly-Reed plucks a prologue from the slush pile and finds herself hooked by the steamy prose. The author has furthermore titillated her by breaking the rules: no SASE, no cover letter. Maris knows only that his initials are P.M.E. and he lives on St. Anne Island in Georgia. (How does she know P.M.E. is a man? She... knows.) Gutsy, idealistic, deliciously sexy, Maris is married to philandering sociopath Noah Reed, who runs Matherly Press with Maris and her father, Daniel, last of the silver-maned gentleman publishers. As for P(arker) M(ackensie) E(vans), he's a bitter, wheelchair-bound, first-time novelist or is he? Is he using Maris to avenge himself against Noah, or does he love her madly or can the answer be all of the above? Cutting back and forth between the ?bernovel and Parker's autobiographical novel about a purloined novel, Brown stages one dramatic scene after another. The narrative voices don't change much (although the typefaces do), but Brown's loyal legions frankly won't give a damn. Copyright 1999 CahnersBusiness Information.