Kirkus Reviews
~ Another chill-free thriller from Patterson (Kiss the Girls, 1995, etc.), this one pitting a chanteuse with a past against one of recent history's more improbable psychopaths. Maggie Bradford (a blond beauty who narrates perhaps half the tale) heads to Manhattan with daughter Jennie in search of a fresh start after offing her husband, a physically abusive Army officer assigned to West Point. With help from mentor Barry Kahn, whiny Maggie soon makes an international name for herself as a singer- songwriter. Still, despite superstardom as a pop-music diva, she's vaguely discontented. Wealthy Patrick O'Malley, a Westchester widower whose home is just down the road from Maggie's country digs, briefly brings her to life and sires a baby brother for Jen before succumbing to a heart attack. O'Malley's untimely death leaves earth-mother Maggie vulnerable to the demented attentions of Will Shepherd, an American-born, English-reared soccer star who obsesses on her compositions and engages in any number of antisocial acts to forget his perdurable sorrow at mum's of him desertion when he was a child. While handsome Will (a.k.a. Blond Arrow) eventually beds and weds neurotic Maggie, the marriage quickly turns sour. Returning to the violent, cocaine-snorting ways that gave brother Palmer the means to blackmail him, the aggrieved footballer turned film actor vows vengeance. In a late-night confrontation, however, Will's apparently slain by Maggie, who's put on trial for his murder by a politically ambitious DA. Neither the implausible resolution of this sensational homicide nor Maggie's fate will come as much of a surprise, let alone shock, to readers masochistic enough to stay the course. Fit only for those who find Sidney Sheldon too sophisticated. (First printing of 250,000; Literary Guild main selection; $200,000 ad/promo) Copyright 1999 Kirkus Reviews
Library Journal Reviews
Beautiful Maggie Bradford seems to have it all: a successful career as a singer/songwriter, fame, money, and two precious children. However, she killed her first husband in self-defense and now she's in jail awaiting trial for the murder of her second husband, Will Shepherd, a charming, psychotic professional soccer player. At first, Maggie's marriage seems fine, but soon Will begins to act irrationally. The increasing tension comes to a head when Maggie comes to believe that Will has been sexually abusing her daughter; the resulting confrontation ends in Will's death and Maggie's arrest. Climaxing in Maggie's celebrity trial, this page-turner delivers a solid punch, complete with a surprise ending. Patterson (Kiss the Girls, Little, Brown, 1995) offers a vivid, emotionally revealing tale. Recommended for public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/95.]?Stacie Browne Chandler, Whitman P.L., Mass. Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information.
Publishers Weekly Reviews
If Thomas Harris's psycho-thrillers are the creme de la creme of the genre, then Patterson's (Kiss the Girls; Along Came a Spider) are the skimmed milk?fluid, but low in substance. In his new novel, the author again lays down a narrative line so gripping?an effect achieved partly through a plethora of one-sentence paragraphs, a la Sidney Sheldon?that the reader may not notice, or care, that characterization and originality have fallen by the wayside. Patterson tells his story through two points of view: there's the the first-person voice of Maggie Bradford, who kills her abusive husband in the novel's flashback prologue and has now become a world-famous singer-songwriter (``I love your music, Maggie,'' Barbra Streisand tells her); and there's a third-person narration that is often filtered through the eyes of Will Shepherd, the celebrated soccer star who romances Maggie after her interim lover, an older tycoon, dies of a heart attack. The devastatingly handsome Will likes to hurt women (``there was a distinctly good part in him, but also a bad part''), however, and sometimes even to kill them. Will seems to want Maggie to save him from himself. Using his beauty and charm on her and her children, he wins her hand in marriage. That union sets up a major-league deja vu, two murder trials that aren't quite riveting and a final Big Twist that will only surprise those fresh to the thriller genre. Still, Will's descent into cartoonishness, and various loose threads, will probably not bother readers swept along by this lightweight pop fiction. (Jan.) Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information.