Flight to Yesterday

Romantic suspense veteran Johnston ( The Man at Windmere ) turns in a lackluster performance with this tale of a young woman's attempt to prove herself innocent of murder. Sara Hargreaves escapes from a California prison where she was wrongly sentenced for killing her lover, plastic surgeon Manuelo Covarrubias. Waiting for the outcry over her escape to abate, Sara works as a waitress near Los Angeles and lives in a motel run by aspiring lawyer Mike Rolfe, with whom she begins an affair and who eventually recognizes her true identity. Determined to find the real killer, the two infiltrate Covarrubias's exclusive sanitarium in the San Joaquin Valley, where they encounter others with motives for the crime. These include the partner Covarrubias had blackmailed; a woman whose face he had allegedly disfigured; a neighbor who had accused him of stealing land; the woman who was Sara's successor as his lover. Though she interweaves flashbacks of Sara and Manuelo's affair with the present, Johnston's tale lacks tension; the plot is elementary and the characters, except for Sara, are not particularly well fleshed out. ( Apr. )