The Cheater

Lily Forrester, the edgy California crusader for justice who got away with killing the criminal she thought raped her daughter in Mitigating Circumstances (1993) and whose daughter took care of the real rapist in Buried Evidence (2000), tangles with a female serial killer in this unsettling thriller from bestseller Rosenberg. Now a Ventura County judge, Lily becomes friends with lawyer Anne Bradley, an attractive single woman new in town. Lily, whose marriage to her second husband, Bryce Donnelly, has been showing signs of strain, has no idea Bryce is a philanderer and a potential victim of Anne’s Alibi Connection, a referral club that helps Anne find and kill adulterers. Mary Stevens, the likable FBI profiler who gets on the trail of unsolved homicides leading to the mysterious Anne, provides relief from the angst-ridden Lily and the book’s villain, a man-hating sociopath whose portrait Rosenberg at times sketches with too heavy a hand. (June)