Tell Me No Secrets

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Although this latest vehicle by the author of See Jane Run ultimately reaches an ingeniously crafted finale, readers may tire of Fielding's mostly irrelevant plot detours and excessive emotional baggage--specifically, the protagonist's constant state of anxiety. Suspense along the way is minimal and often forced, while, for most of its length, the novel reads like a not especially compelling domestic drama. Jess Koster, a 30-year-old prosecutor in the Cook County Ill. state's attorney's office, overreacts to just about everyone and everything; she is particularly obsessed with her mother's unexplained disappearance eight years earlier. A remark by her mother, in fact, is one of the book's many annoyingly repeated phrases. The attenuated storyline snakes around three men in Jess's life; while they figure prominently in a clever denouement, their individual encounters with Jess exhibit little freshness. Jess's family relationships are unconvincingly strained, while her courtroom work proves mundane: in a pointless trial sequence, her strategy for winning a murder conviction, hailed by coworkers as ``brilliant,'' will be old hat to mystery devotees. Because this heroine seems not to like herself--and displays few engaging qualities--it becomes difficult to like or empathize with her often imaginary plights. First serial to Cosmopolitan; Literary Guild main selection. June

Library Journal

The joy of a good whodunit so often lies in how the author plays with and reveals the possible twists. So it is with Fielding's Tell Me No Secrets. Fielding tries to weave district attorney Jess Koster's complicated inner struggle of past and present fears with her current cases--horrible crimes that force Jess to face her vulnerabilities. The clues add up, and listeners will probably figure it out long before Jess does, but there remains skill to admire in how Fielding closes this novel and pulls it all together. The reading by Jean Reed Bahle plays a huge role in one's enjoyment, as she captures Rick Ferguson's cruel leer and Jess's wild imaginings and private admonishments. Bahle must overcome some stilted writing, especially mid-story, but she helps keep the listener interested. For large mystery collections.-- Joyce Kessel, Villa Maria Coll . , Buffalo, N.Y .

John Mort

A routine legal thriller set in Chicago, somewhat similar to Richard North Patterson's "Degree of Guilt" in that it deals with rape, the difficulties the legal system faces in prosecuting that crime, and the independence, frustrations, and terrors of single professional women. However, Fielding puts her character, a lawyer named Jess Koster, inside a plot that reminds one of the film "Class Action" (Jess faces off against her ex-husband, rather than her father) and various formula romances. To wit, all the men are no good except one, and he, through no fault of his own, "appears" to be bad, while the guy the reader is led to "think" is good--in this case Jess' ex-husband--really isn't. So when Jess' ex rescues, or seems to rescue, her from the predictably sadistic stalker/rapist, her comment that "It's just like in the movies" may seem like self-parody. Jess escapes this formula--and becomes not only real, but touching--when she visits her suburban sister and the brother-in-law she despises, when she talks with a woman juror in a rape trial about why the verdict was not guilty, and when we visit with her in her private fear. Otherwise, she's made for TV, which is to say, she'll be popular.

Kirkus Reviews

Eight years after her mother mysteriously disappeared on her way to a doctor's appointment, Chicago prosecutor Jess Koster's panic attacks have returned—as she fights to convict a sadistic rapist who may have killed his latest victim. But Rick Ferguson—the man who threatened to kill Connie DeVuono if she pressed charges and then smiled at the news of her disappearance—may not even be the man behind Jess's stifling fear. Puzzling over the question of who sent her a urine-soaked letter garnished with pubic hairs, she wonders "how many men [she had] managed to alienate in her young life" It's a good question for a workaholic prosecutor—especially when you add Jess's hostility toward her lovesick father, her controlling brother-in-law Barry Peppler, her bedroom-minded colleague Greg Oliver, and Terry Wales, the Crossbow Murderer she's trying to nail on murder one. Even the two men she can bring herself to trust—her provocative new romantic interest, Adam Stohn, a shoe salesman; and her protective ex-husband, Don Shaw, who turns out to be Rick Ferguson's own attorney—are pulling her apart by their appeals to her loyalty. Maybe she's just imagining seeing Ferguson's face in so many crowds. But she's not imagining the vandalism to her car or the break-in to her house; and the prognosis on her pet canary doesn't look too good either. Fielding (See Jane Run, 1991, etc.) has always been at her best when her soapy tales of female oppression have been sparked by a criminal interest, and despite a wildly improbable (though politically correct) climax, the story she has to tell this time is a corker that runs rings around Mary Higgins Clark. Don't even think ofstarting this anywhere near bedtime. (First serial to Cosmopolitan; Literary Guild Triple Selection for July)