Wedding Night

Devon's formulaic, fast-paced third thriller tells the story of an ecstatic bride who discovers that her new husband has concealed a murderous past. Callie McKenna, a successful Hollywood actress, thinks she's found the love of her life when she marries would-be lawyer Malcolm Rhodes after a brief, passionate affair. But Malcolm's nervous behavior at the reception turns out to be more than a case of post-wedding jitters, and when the groom's father tracks down the happy couple on their honeymoon and reveals his son's sordid history to Callie, the young bride tries to ditch her man. The plot thickens when a pair of dead bodies surface at the scene of the wedding and when Malcolm catches up to Callie at her isolated home outside Bolinas. A chase scene propels the story to its big ``surprise'' ending, which most readers will have predicted-but Devon has yet another, less predictable, card up his sleeve. Although he never gets beneath the surface of his characters in this thriller, which is more conventional and less inspired than either Bad Desire or Lost, Devon does know how to hook readers and does so again here, albeit without the finesse of his earlier work. (July)