Smoke in Mirrors Jayne Ann Krentz | ISBN : 0-399-14792-6

Smoke in Mirrors

Author: Jayne Ann Krentz

Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated

Publication Date: 29 January, 2002

ISBN: 9780399147920

Pages: 272

Subjects: Mystery, Romance

Available as: Trade Cloth, 978-0-375-43163-0 Trade Cloth, 978-0-399-14792-0 E-Book - Adobe Ebook Reader, 978-0-7865-3891-1

Description:

"Leo, if you're reading this, I'm dead." "A con artist and seductress, Meredith Spooner lived fast and died young. Now it appears that Meredith's last scam is coming back to haunt her friend Leonora Hutton. An e-mail has just arrived in which Meredith - in fear for her life, but as feisty as ever - explains that well over a million dollars in embezzled funds is waiting for Leonora in an offshore account...and a safe-deposit key is on the way." "Leonora wants nothing to do with the tainted money, taken from an endowment fund at a small college. She's already been accused of being in on the theft by Thomas Walker - who, apparently, was a victim of Meredith's knack for both scams and seductions. Eager to prove him wrong and escape this mess, Leonora sets out to collect the cash and hand it over." "But there are two other items in the safe-deposit box. One is a book about Mirror House, where Meredith engineered her final deception - a mansion filled with antique looking-glasses that produce a dizzying infinity of reflections. The other is a set of newspaper stories about a thirty-year-old murder that occurred there, a murder unsolved to this day." "Now Leonora has an offer for Thomas Walker. She'll hand over the money, if he helps her figure out what's happening. In her e-mail, Meredith described Walker as "a man you can trust." But in a funhouse-mirror world of illusion and distortion, Leonora may be out of her league."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

PW Publishers Weekly

Review Source: Publishers Weekly

Review Date: 2001-12-17

Sparks fly between a sexually repressed college librarian and a handyman venture capitalist while they attempt to hunt down a killer who possesses the ability to make murder look like suicide in this tepid romantic thriller from veteran author Krentz (aka Amanda Quick, Stephanie James, Jayne Castle). The news of Meredith Spooner's death comes as no surprise to her half-sister, Leonora Hutton; after all, Meredith was a con artist who was adept at making enemies. But when Thomas Walker, a victim of Meredith's most recent scam, confronts Leonora, demanding that she help him find the $1.5 million that Meredith filched from the Bethany Walker memorial fund and intimating that Meredith may have been murdered, Leonora drops her reference desk position in California to do some amateur sleuthing in Wing Cove, Wash. With the help of Thomas's brainy brother, Deke, she lands a position in Mirror House, an eerie, mirror-lined mansion that houses Eubanks College's alumni office as well as a large collection of rare books. While investigating the connection between Meredith's death and two other suspicious deaths, Leonora romances Thomas with the help of her matchmaking grandmother and a disgruntled advice columnist and pairs Deke with his sexy yoga instructor. A few half-hearted attempts on Thomas's life, orchestrated by a fraudulent stress therapist, add some zing to this one-dimensional read, but events spiral too quickly toward an unexpected and unbelievable conclusion. Once a college librarian herself, Krentz (Dawn in Eclipse Bay; Slightly Shady) ably depicts the competitive atmosphere of the academic arena, but this awkward pairing of dark melodrama and frothy romance fails to impress. National author tour. (Jan. 7) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved