No Time for an Everyday Woman

A resourceful woman in trouble struggles to get out of it in Morrone's well-written, if somewhat fractured, debut. Political numbers cruncher Lorelei Muldoon is a smart woman whose frame of reference is old movies. She's sorely in need of some worldly wisdom--much of which she acquires under pressure when her affair with Montana's junior senator almost costs her her life several times. En route to Senator ""Bandit"" Colman's hideaway in Merciful Valley, Mont., the senator's private plane crashes just before landing, killing the senator and injuring Lorelei. She is rescued by a man she assumes is a ranger until she realizes that he has no intention of taking her into town. After he leaves her in the woods with a guard dog, she manages to retrace her steps to the plane and then find her way to the senator's cabin, where she confronts another man, who points a gun straight at her. The mystery has less to do with who's trying to kill her than why, and once Lorelei begins to question why the senator suddenly developed such a passionate romantic interest in her, she begins to piece together the story behind his death and the threats to her life. The reader knows much of the story long before Lorelei does because of Morrone's penchant for telling all in short scenes from many points of view. But the basic plot of drug smuggling intertwined with the powerful and beautiful is a credible beginning for Lorelei, a woman who is game for anything and worth getting to know better. (July)