cover image From Barcelona with Love

From Barcelona with Love

Elizabeth Adler. St. Martin's, $25.99 (352p) ISBN 978-0-312-66835-8

Adler's fun fourth romantic thriller featuring TV star and PI Mac Reilly and PR firm owner and gifted cook Sunny Alvarez (after It All Began in Monte Carlo) takes the pair, who are now living together, from California to Barcelona. After a Los Angeles court acquits pop singer Bibi Fortunata of murdering her lover and her lover's mistress, who happened to be Bibi's best friend, Bibi, her career ruined by the scandal, reluctantly sends her precocious nine-year-old daughter, Paloma, to Barcelona, to live with Bibi's super-wealthy and eccentric Spanish family, whose gorgeous matriarch was Mac's first love. Bibi soon afterward follows her daughter to Europe, then disappears. Two years later, Paloma appeals to Mac and Sunny for help in finding her missing mother. With Mac's "bad-boy good looks" whipping up the froth on the surface of this sexy tale, this summer smoothie goes down in one great gulp of easy reading. (June)