Fair Is the Rose

McKinney ( Lions and Lace ) delivers plenty of strong frontier flavor in this melodramatic but entertaining historical romance, her hardcover debut. In the 1880s, New Yorker Christabel Van Alen, falsely convicted of the murder of her wealthy, illustrious parents, escapes from an asylum for the criminally insane and flees to Wyoming territory. The real killer, she knows, is her dastardly, mustache-twirling uncle, and she is more afraid of him than of the law, sure that only her death will leave him satisfied. Enter a gang of brutal thieves, who waylay a stagecoach and take Christabel hostage. Christabel is attracted to the outlaws' unacknowledged leader, handsome Macauley Cain, but when he turns out to be an undercover U.S. marshal, she fears he will despise her if he learns of her past. She runs away again, this time becoming a dance-hall girl in a frontier town. Of course Macauley finds her, but so does an assassin sent by her uncle. The bodice-ripping grows tiresome and the plot creaks at times, but all the ingredients for light diversion are solidly in place. (May)