TV personality and bestseller Grace (Objection!
with Diane Clehane) makes her fiction debut with a less than compelling thriller starring a heroine much like herself, Hailey Dean, a highly successful Atlanta assistant DA who loses her fiancé to violence. After a final courtroom triumph, the conviction of chef Clint Burrell Cruise for the murder of 11 prostitutes, Dean resigns her prosecutor post and moves to Manhattan, where within two years she has a new career as a therapist. When someone starts to murder her patients with an m.o. similar to Cruise’s, Dean becomes a suspect. Rather implausibly, neither the NYPD nor Dean is aware that Cruise has been released from prison after the reversal of his conviction on appeal. Little inconsistencies, like calling Cruise “the most prolific serial killer ever to stalk the city of Atlanta,” even though many would award that dubious honor to real-life child-killer Wayne Williams (referred to in the text), don’t help. (Aug.)
