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The Perfect Husband

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Overview

What would you do if the man of your dreams hides the soul of a killer Jim Beckett was everything she'd ever dreamed of...But two years after Tess married the decorated cop and bore his child, she helped put him behind bars for savagely murdering ten women. Even locked up in a maximum security prison, he vowed he would come after her and make her pay. Now the cunning killer has escaped--and the most dangerous game of all begins....After a lifetime of fear, Tess will do something she's never done before. She's going to learn to protect her daughter and fight back, with the help of a burned-out ex-marine. As the largest manhunt four states have ever seen mobilizes to catch Beckett, the clock winds down to the terrifying reunion between husband and wife. And Tess knows that this time, her only choices are to kill--or be killed.Lisa Gardner sold her first novel when she was 20 years old. In 1993 she graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in international relations. She lives in Rhode Island, where she is at work on her next novel of suspense.

Editorial Reviews

Lisa Baumgartner makes her debut as a writer of romantic suspense under the name of Lisa Gardner with this sexy and smooth-talking first. The villain, Jim Beckett, cuts off the fingers of his victims with a dull Swiss Army knife--before he bats their brains out with a Louisville slugger. His poor ex-wife, Tess, who helped to get him arrested, is on the run with her daughter because Jim has escaped from jail and vowed to cut the still-beating heart out of her chest. Tess offers retired mercenary and sometime drunk J.T. Dillon $100,000 if he will teach her how to defend herself. J.T., like the others of his ilk, has muscles of steel attached to viscera of mush. He takes up her cause and gives Tess her first orgasm--psycho-killers apparently are not good lovers. In what might be termed the new genre of "grisly romance," Gardner delivers a streamlined bang-up addition to the oeuvre of Tami Hoag, Karen Robards, Elizabeth Powell and, these days, even Nora Roberts. (Dec.) -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Lisa Gardner

Lisa Gardner is the New York Times bestselling author of Gone, Alone, The Killing Hour, The Survivors Club, The Next Accident, The Other Daughter, The Third Victim, and The Perfect Husband. She lives with her family in New England, where she is at work on her next novel of suspense.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Bantam Books

Filesize

920.38 KB

Number of Pages

432

eBook ISBN

9780553900866

Excerpt from: The Perfect Husband by Lisa Gardner

ONE
Five years later

J. T. DILLON WAS DRUNK. Outside, the white-hot desert sun was straight up in the sky, bleaching bones and parching mountains. Saguaro cacti seemed to surf waves of heat while sagebrush died of sunstroke at their feet. And all over Nogales, people hid in darkened rooms, running ice cubes down their naked chests and cursing God for having saved August's apocalypse for September.

But he didn't notice.

In the middle of the cool green oasis of his ranch-style home, J. T. Dillon lay sprawled on his back, his right hand cradling the silver-framed picture of a smiling woman and gorgeous little boy. His left hand held an empty tequila bottle.

Above him a fan stirred the air-conditioned breeze through the living room. Below him a Navajo print rug absorbed his sweat. The room was well maintained and tastefully decorated with wicker furniture and sturdy yucca soap trees.

He stopped noticing such details after his first day of straight tequila. As any marine knew, true binge drinking was art, and J.T. considered himself to be Tequila Willie's first Michelangelo. Shot number one seared away throat lining. Shot number two burned away the taste of the first. Half a bottle later, no man worth his salt even winced at the sensation of cheap, raw tequila ripping down his esophagus, into his stomach, and sooner or later, out his bowels.

By the end of day one J.T. had been beyond conscious thought. The ceiling fan had become a prehistoric bird, his wicker sofa a tiger lying in wait. The toughest, meanest marine in the world had developed a bad case of the giggles. When he closed his eyes, the world had spun sickeningly, so he'd spent his first night with his eyelids propped open by his fingers, staring at the ceiling hour after hour after hour.

Now, on his fourth day of straight tequila, he'd gone beyond thought and surrendered most of his body. His face had gone first. He'd been sitting by his pool, swigging some great Cuervo Gold, and abruptly he'd realized he could no longer feel his nose. He tried to find it with his fingers ' no dice. His nose was gone. An hour later his cheeks disappeared as well. No rasp of whiskers, no sting of sweat. He had no cheeks. Finally, not that long ago, he'd lost his lips. He'd tried to open them and they hadn't been there anymore. No lips.