Enemy Within

Set in California's Napa Valley, this romantic suspense novel features Rachel Spaulding, a woman who inherits her adoptive family's winery against the wishes of their natural daughter, Annie. Vindictive Annie sets dangerous events in motion when she hires private investigator Gregory Shaw, who unearths an old scandal--the murder of Rachel's father and the disappearance of her birth mother--inadvertently flushing out the true murderer. Shaw, once the object of Rachel's teenage crush (now totally persona non grata), must keep Rachel out of harm's way, even as he falls deeply in love with her. Unfortunately, this intriguing, promising plot is sapped by distracting secondary characters, proliferating subplots and a surfeit of red herrings. The poignant human story at the core, which describes the relationship of a mother and daughter who each thought the other dead, only to discover each other anew, peters out until it becomes almost inconsequential. Though Heggan's (Trust No One) dialogue is for the most part skillful, sustaining suspense here proves problematic. (Feb.)