Creeping Shadows

Jennifer Warren has fled Los Angeles for the appropriately named town of Hidden Valley, Ariz.--she is a woman on the run from her past and from her psychotic, misogynistic ex-husband, Jackson Holloway. Holloway is an immensely rich investor and real estate developer who desires only to find his ex-wife and kill her. Warren falls in love, remarries and becomes reconciled with her estranged daughter, Clea, but despite these developments, which feel mechanical, and flashbacks to Warren's miserable days in '60s Haight-Ashbury, the story remains static. And although the characters are spicy--Holloway sexually and physically abuses his current wife and Warren displays admirable spunk--they don't evolve. Nor is there any reward for readers who stick it out to the end, since Warren and Holloway never confront each other except in a brief and curiously dispassionate meeting at the end of the tale. Holloway does get his comeuppance in the epilogue, but Warren is 6000 miles away and reads about it in a newspaper--two more barriers to any emotional involvement on the part of readers. Amo wrote Come Nightfall. (Aug.)