You Never Know

This disjointed domestic suspense novel from bestseller Briscoe (Money Can’t Buy Love) opens with Alexis Roberts describing to the police how she fought off an intruder in her Columbia, Md., home. As her attorney husband, Marcus, was away at the time, it seems that only Alexis’s pluck has saved her from certain death. Flashback a year to Alexis’s first meeting with Marcus at a fundraiser for children with special needs. Immediately smitten with the handsome, wealthy, and attentive stranger, Alexis soon drops her possessive boyfriend, Paul Jackson, and agrees to marry Marcus. She blithely brushes aside her friends’ concerns about her hasty wedding plans and the disturbing whispers about the mysterious disappearance of her new fiancé’s first wife. Once settled into married life, Alexis begins to realize that the man of her dreams may indeed be too good to be true. As Alexis rifles through Marcus’s home office files and interviews his relatives, she begins to wonder whether he’s capable of murder. Weak motivations, dangling story lines, and an ending that seems like a rushed afterthought make this one of Briscoe’s lesser efforts. Hopefully, she’ll return to form next time. Agent: Victoria Sanders, Victoria Sanders & Assoc. (Mar.)