Expose

Readers of Van Wormer's romantic suspense tale Just for the Summer will find themselves on familiar turf here. Once again, an appealing heroine who stands at romantic and professional crossroads ends up playing Nancy Drew in a dangerous mystery connected to her family's past. Here, too, the background is East Coast upper crust, with a sprinkling of cameo appearances by real-life movers and shakers. Van Wormer may be formulaic, but she's very good at what she does. Her 30-year-old protagonist, journalist Sally Harrington, is an appealing mix of brains and folly. She has the moral courage to join a sandbag brigade when there's a fire in her hometown, Castleford, Conn., but she's not beyond tumbling into bed with Manhattan book editor Spencer Hawes even though she's officially in love with her high school beau, Assistant District Attorney Doug Wrentham. In lively prose generously spiked with believable dialogue, Van Wormer weaves Sally's romantic dilemma through a thick plot centered around her plummy assignment from tabloid magazine Expectations: to profile Cassy Cochran, the beautiful and beloved president of the Darenbrook Broadcasting System. But is the assignment what it seems? Or does Expectations's venal publisher, Verity Rhodes, have a hidden agenda--and will Sally's ambitions lead her to play Verity's game? Meanwhile, can Sally find the connection between the murder victim she discovers under a railroad trestle and her own father's death in a flood two decades ago? Though the answers are never in doubt, Van Wormer does keep the reader guessing on the romantic front and entertained by Sally's outspoken mother, Belle, a New England classic. Agent, Loretta Barrett. Author tour. (Aug.)