Come Midnight

Winner of the Romantic Times ``Most Sensual Writer'' award, Forster (Shameless) lives up to her reputation in this steamy tale of a Los Angeles psychologist who falls hard for the accused murderer she's supposed to help her D.A. fiance prosecute. The ambitiously career-minded daughter of a controlling society maven, Leigh Rappaport falls under the equally controlling spell of the almost impossibly mesmerizing art photographer Nick Montera, who's accused of killing his former lover, when she tries to administer a series of psychological tests. The trial/murder plot is suspenseful and well developed and the protagonists' physical encounters are graphically erotic, but Nick is initially so manipulative, misogynistic and willfully enigmatic that it's hard to like him, even when he starts playing nice, and Leigh's emotional responses to him are often disturbingly masochistic. More appealing as a thriller than as a romance, Come Midnight has in Leigh an intelligent, psychologically complex and engaging heroine, which makes her ready submission to Nick's harsh passions all the more troubling. (Feb.)