Hit List

At the start of bestseller Woods’s one-note 53rd Stone Barrington novel (after Treason), the fabulously rich New York attorney discovers that his name is on a hit list of 10 people, one of whom is soon shot dead while skating at Rockefeller Center’s ice rink. Everyone on the list was an employee at one time at Strategic Services, a private security firm, except for Stone, though he had done consulting work for the company. A disgruntled former Strategic Services employee, Sig Larkin, emerges as the lone suspect. Stone’s efforts to elude Larkin take him to various places where he owns houses, including England, Maine, and Santa Fe, N.Mex., but Larkin, who has recently won a fortune in the lottery, is able to match Stone’s jet-setting pace. Romantic interludes with a couple of willing women provide Stone some respite from the cartoonish action until the climactic showdown on motorcycles. The book’s high spot is Stone’s reunion at the end with longtime paramour Holly Barker, who’s running for president, which promises potential personal complications next time. This entry amounts to an extended chase scene. Agent: Anne Sibbald, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Mar.)

Due to a production error, this review originally published as a starred review.