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Overview
A talented landscape painter and portrait artist in her early thirties, Paris Sweeney has achieved enviable success: her work sells at an exclusive New York City gallery owned by her friend, Candra Worth, and her popularity is at an all-time high. Sweeney, as she is affectionately called by those close to her, loves her work and is content with her life.Then she begins to notice odd changes: traffic lights turn green when she approaches. Her plants are in full bloom out of season. Perhaps they're just coincidences, but she can't ignore her dreams--lush, vivid, and drenched in vibrant hues--which are influencing her artwork. And she can't deny her growing restlessness... Suddenly, impulsively, Sweeney finds herself unable to resist a night of intense passion with millionaire Richard Worth, Candra's estranged husband. But the true dangers of her all-consuming urges are about to be revealed where Sweeney least expects it: in her paintings.
After a creative frenzy she can barely recall, Sweeney discovers she has rendered a disturbing image--a graphic murder scene. Against her better instincts, she returns to the canvas time and again, filling out each chilling detail piece by piece--a shoe, the body of a victim, and soon, the victim's face. But when a shattering, real-life murder mirrors her creation, Sweeney is thrust into suspicious light. Now, with every stroke of her brush, she risks incriminating herself with her inexplicable knowledge of a deadly crime. And every desire--including her hungry attraction to Richard--is loaded with uncertainty and terrifying discovery as Sweeney races to unmask a killer.
Synopsis
With the scintillating sensuality and high-voltage thrills that distinguish all of her blockbusters of romantic suspense, Linda Howard grips the imagination and touches the heart as only she can, in her sixth dazzling New York Times bestseller.
A talented painter in her early thirties, Paris Sweeney has achieved enviable success: her work sells at an exclusive New York City gallery, and her popularity is at an all-time high. Life is good, and Sweeney, as she prefers to be called, is content.
But lately, Sweeney's dreams — lush, vivid, and drenched in vibrant hues — seem to echo a growing restlessness that has taken hold of her. Suddenly, impulsively, Sweeney falls into a night of intense passion with millionaire Richard Worth. Now, the true dangers of her all-consuming urges are about to be revealed where Sweeney least expects it: in her paintings.
After a creative frenzy she can barely recall, Sweeney discovers she has rendered a disturbing image — a graphic murder scene. Against her better instincts, she returns to the canvas time and again, filling out each chilling detail piece by piece. But when a shattering, real-life murder mirrors her creation, Sweeney falls under suspicion. With every stroke of her brush, she risks incriminating herself with her inexplicable knowledge of a deadly crime. And every desire — including her hunger for Richard — is loaded with uncertainty as Sweeney races to unmask a killer.
Library Journal
When artist Paris Sweeny starts seeing ghosts on the street, guessing the Jeopardy answers before the clues are shown, and making street lights turn green every time she approaches, she thinks her life couldn't get any stranger. Then she goes into a trance and paints a graphic murder scene the night it happens. When she starts painting another partial murder scene, she finds that the only person she can trust is Richard Worth, the wealthy and powerful ex-husband of the woman who has made Sweeny's career as an artist successful. Talia Balsam's reading is clear and expressive, never intruding on the story. The recording itself is expertly edited, with well-trimmed side breaks and adequate pauses between scenes. Recommended.--Adrienne Furness, Lockport P.L., NY Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Editorials
Library Journal
When artist Paris Sweeny starts seeing ghosts on the street, guessing the Jeopardy answers before the clues are shown, and making street lights turn green every time she approaches, she thinks her life couldn't get any stranger. Then she goes into a trance and paints a graphic murder scene the night it happens. When she starts painting another partial murder scene, she finds that the only person she can trust is Richard Worth, the wealthy and powerful ex-husband of the woman who has made Sweeny's career as an artist successful. Talia Balsam's reading is clear and expressive, never intruding on the story. The recording itself is expertly edited, with well-trimmed side breaks and adequate pauses between scenes. Recommended.--Adrienne Furness, Lockport P.L., NY Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.Jessi Rose Lucas
August 1998Linda Howard is back with a blistering thriller. Her novels have moved from the overtly romantic to the extremely thrilling, but all the while she's kept her edge. Now You See Her sizzles with sensual fire and burns with the sexual tension for which Howard is known.
Paris Sweeney, who prefers to go by her last name, is a painter. Well, more than anything, she consumes the colors around her and pours them, slightly subdued, onto the canvas. One day things get a little trippy when, looking at a gorgeous sky and street, she sees the ghost of a friend's child tagging along behind his mother. In a moment, Sweeney understands that somehow her life has changed, and that she will never view the world in the same way ever again. She makes the effort to ignore her spectral visions and manages to continue with her career. In her new home, New York City, her career as an artist is taking off, but something keeps bothering Sweeney -- something other than the ghosts that she continues to see, and ignore, in Manhattan. Something that has changed her radically as an artist. No longer able to paint pretty and traditional portraits and landscapes, she finds that her new paintings are bold and bursting with color. Too confused by this sudden change, Sweeney is hesitant even to show the new work to her agent, Candra. Making matters worse, ever since she came to the city, she's felt the magnetic pull of Candra's filthy-rich husband, Richard. Despite her steamy fantasies, Sweeney has no intention of beginning a career as a homewrecker. But when she learns from Candra's assistant, the hunky Hawaiian boy-toy Kai, that Candra and Richard are splitsville, Sweeney wonders if there might be a possibility of romance.
When Richard gives her a ride in the rain one night, she learns more about his intentions toward her. He wants Sweeney badly, and he's been going through the divorce with her agent for a year. But Sweeney doesn't want to get entangled in this while he is still married, and she has some loyalty to the woman who is her agent -- even though she's sure that Candra has been fooling around with Kai. When Candra herself calls Sweeney to tell her that she'd give her blessing to a relationship between Richard and Sweeney, Sweeney's head really begins to spin trying to figure out just what could possibly be going on behind this wacky relationship. Candra doesn't seem to be suffering from such stress, and she enjoys a lustful night of hot passion with her younger lover, plotting for a big divorce settlement from her husband.
As the mystery of Candra and Richard's divorce proceedings slowly comes to light, a nightmarish twist occurs: The kind gentleman who always sold Sweeney her lunchtime hot dogs is killed. Eerily, the image of his corpse in the alleyway in which he died miraculously appears as a painting on one of Sweeney's canvases, with her signature at the bottom, leaving her to fear what dark force is at work. As the suspense builds, and as Now You See Her becomes at turns an erotic thriller and a stunning murder story, Sweeney discovers that sometimes one must open up the most terrifying doors to access the human heart.
Linda Howard has hit her stride with Now You See Her, a novel that won't be forgotten. It has all the heat of a Judith Krantz novel and all the suspense of the best of Mary Higgins Clark.
--Jessi Rose Lucas
Jessi Rose Lucas's first romance novel, The Swan Prince, is forthcoming. She lives on the New England coast and is currently working on her second novel, The Tarnished Knight, a medieval romance about Lancelot and Guinevere.
Susan Johnson
Read the story and see! This was a well written romantic suspense. I am not usually drawn to this type of book but Linda Howard serves her readers well with this one.— Mystery Magazine Online