Honeymoon

How does it feel to be desired by every man and envied by every woman? Wonderful. This is the life Nora Sinclair has dreamed about, the life she's worked hard for, the life she will never give up. Meet Nora Sinclair.

When FBI agent John O'Hara first sees her, she seems perfect. She has the looks. The career. The clothes. The wit. The sophistication. The tantalizing sex appeal. The whole extraordinary package - and men fall in line to court her. She doesn't just attract men, she enthralls them. If you dare.

So why is the FBI so interested in Nora Sinclair? Mysterious things keep happening to people around her, especially the men. And there is something dangerous about Nora when Agent O'Hara looks closer - something that lures him at the same time that it fills him with fear. Is there something dark hidden among the unexplained gaps in her past? And as he spends more and more time getting to know her, is he pursuing justice? Or his own fatal obsession?

To be published on Valentine's Day, this solid and enjoyable but not exceptional thriller about a Black Widow killer has been selected by Bookspan as the "2005 International Thriller of the Year." That's obviously jumping the gun, and probably has more to do with the unusual sales gambit by which Bookspan was allowed to sell the book prior to bookstore distribution than with the novel's quality. Still, megaseller Patterson, here writing for the first time with Roughan (The Up and Comer), again shows his usual flair for brisk narrative, strong suspense and genuine twists in tracing the story of how FBI agent John O'Hara tracks down serial killer Nora Sinclair. As the novel opens, beautiful Nora, an interior designer for the very rich, and already wealthy after having killed her first husband for his inheritance, is juggling an engagement to a hedge-fund manager in tony Briarcliff Manor in upstate New York and a marriage to a bestselling author in Boston. She intends to kill both, but chooses the hedge-fund manager first; after she poisons him, enter O'Hara, posing as a sympathetic insurance investigator but secretly working to nab Nora. In time, Nora seduces O'Hara, so his attempt to catch her is compromised by lust; there's also a major subplot involving a suitcase containing documents pointing to more than a billion dollars transferred to Cayman Islands banks, a subplot fully tied into the main plot only near book's end. O'Hara and particularly Nora stand as two of Patterson's most complex characters yet, but the narrative, while nearly impossible to stop reading, doesn't have the emotional pull of the author's Alex Cross novels or some of his Women's Murder Club titles. This is one canny thriller, though, and Patterson's millions of fans will be most pleased. Expect sky-high sales. Agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh. Major ad/promo. (Feb. 14) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

• Published by

  Little, Brown and Company

• Publish Date

  January 01, 2006 

• Print ISBN

  0446696269

• eBook ISBN

  9780316026789

• Imprint

  Little, Brown and Company

• Filesize

  344.75 KB

• Number of Print Pages*

  400

* Number of eBook pages may differ. Click here for more information.