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Synopsis
When the rich, successful husband of a beautiful New York actress mysteriously disappears, she plunges into a desperate search to find him... and into a menacing web of secrets, deception, and danger. Once again Judith McNaught, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Night Whispers, crafts a thrilling tale filled with unrelenting suspense, unforgettable characters, and powerful undercurrents of greed, ambition, and desire.
Leigh Kendall reveled in her stellar Broadway acting career and in her marriage to Logan Manning, scion of an old New York family. When her husband finds an old country cottage, he decides to build their dream house and surprise Leigh with her first view of the mountain property. After a Sunday night performance, Leigh heads north to join him, and into a blinding blizzard. Lost and alone, she's deliberately run off the road. When she awakes in the local hospital, seriously injured, she asks for her husband. The police arrive to inform her that he has myteriously disappeared, and Leigh, although obviously distraught, becomes the focus of their suspicions.
The more she discovers about her husband and his business affairs, the less she realizes she knew about Logan Manning, and the more terrified she becomes. Now, with no one to help her, she is heading deeper and deeper into unknown territory... where friends and enemies are impossible to distinguish, and where the truth becomes the most terrifying weapon of all.
Publishers Weekly
Night Whispers, McNaught's first romantic suspense novel (after a host of historicals), hit the charts hard, and this solid follow-up looks to do the same. Legendary stage actress Leigh Kendall is starring in a Broadway play, lives in a fabulous apartment and adores her husband, Logan Manning, a handsome, rich and virile businessman. After an afternoon performance, she's off to meet Logan in their country cabin, where he's promised an evening of lust and love in front of a roaring fire. Her life changes forever when she drives over an embankment in a snowstorm and barely escapes death. After waking up bruised and battered in the hospital, she finds Logan missing, her rival performing her part in the play, a creepy stalker sending expensive flowers and the evil Michael Valente, a business acquaintance of her husband's, being suspiciously attentive. Leigh checks out of the hospital and begins a frantic search for Logan aided by a team of detectives from the NYPD. As the search intensifies, she begins to learn secrets that expose her golden marriage as a fraud and her husband as a serial cheater. A romantic subplot features two of the cops investigating her case, the chiseled Lt. Mitchell McCord and rookie detective Samantha Littleton, who partner up in more ways than one. Leigh proves to be a stalwart if privileged heroine who finds a knight in shining armor in an unexpected corner of her past. The suspense is not terribly suspenseful, and several plot threads go uncollected, but romance is McNaught's bread and butter and she serves it up in abundance. (Feb.) Forecast: Some of McNaught's fans are not happy with her switch from historical romance to contemporaries, but sales have yet to dip-expect this to move fast. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.