The story is familiar. He brings in the money; she's the family and community anchor. Between shuttling their perfect kids to and from a variety of intellectually and athletically stimulating activities, Elizabeth occupies her time beautifying the house and garden and putting together the annual (pick one or more) library auction, symphony fund-raiser, block party. Then, when the kids are grown, she and her husband, Jackson, look at each other and realize that love is no longer the reason they're together.
In fast-moving prose punctuated by snappy asides ("The details of their life were hers. He got to throw the game-winning passes. She got to take tickets and clean the stadium"), Hannah examines whether love and commitment are enough to sustain a marriage when two people who have put their individual dreams on ice get the chance to defrost them. Unlike most stories about middle-aged love, Distant Shores doesn't patronize with either pat answers or man-bashing. (Ballantine, $22.95)
Bottom Line: Shore bet
By Faye Kellerman
In Kellerman's 14th Peter Decker novel, the vacationing L.A. detective takes a busman's holiday, plunging knee-deep into a Big Apple double whacking. One victim is the brother-in-law of Decker's half brother, an Orthodox rabbi. The murky investigation heads directly into the kinky netherworld of a suspect—a psychotic Mafia soldier who is an old adversary of Decker's and makes pit stops at porno photo shoots when he's not chatting about child molestation and incest. As the rabbi becomes evasive, though, Decker starts to wonder if the hood is the only guy around he can trust.
Kellerman's descriptions of the world of Orthodox Jews (she glosses terms as she goes) are involving, as always, and she slings the testosterone-filled verbiage with the best of her male counterparts. Ultimately, though, the various blood ties are so confusing that one yearns for a diagram of a family tree, and most characters are left searching for a voice—save for the Latina distinguished, nauseatingly, by her habit of saying "berry" instead of "very" countless times in her sole appearance. And since when does a vacationing cop spread wads of $20 and $100 bills on a case he's not even assigned? (Warner, $25.95)
Bottom Line: Warmed-over kosher meal
By D.W. Buffa
When Sen. Jeremy Fullerton is found dead in his car on a fog-drenched San Francisco night, police immediately arrest a young black man at the scene. Did the cops nab the right guy? As they say on the Senate floor, "Nay."
Fullerton had enemies everywhere, though, and defense attorney Joseph Antonelli, making his fourth appearance in Buffa's novels, is stumped. As the whos in the whodunit roll out tantalizingly, Buffa (himself a former defense lawyer) expertly lays out the chessboard of the courtroom and its inhabitants, who range from crusty to cunning. Less convincing are the romantic interludes, philosophical musings and political commentary used to pad the page count. "Too bad we don't have somebody with Nixon's mind and Reagan's manner," a former governor tells Antonelli. Maybe, but is this a political thriller or The O'Reilly Factor? (Warner, $25.95)
Bottom Line: Add it to your docket
By Lily Prior
In this hilarious second novel, the natural scent of a woman is more than delightful: It's deadly. Men are driven to adultery, financial ruin, even suicide under the influence of Ramona Drottoveo's beautifully bewitching body odor. In the southern Italian countryside, the lusty albino chambermaid dreams of living in Naples. As men trail her everywhere just to get a whiff, she discovers the richness of her aromatic endowment.
This comic fairy tale is full of colorful but not particularly endearing characters (such as a hunchback who moonlights as a human cannonball at the circus) and absurd situations (one unfortunate butler grows a third ear on the back of his head; dogs and horses swoon in Ramona's path). Like her first novel, La Cucina, Prior's follow-up bursts with mouthwatering descriptions of sumptuous meals. And there's an equally vivid portrayal of the squalor Ramona finds herself living in when her fantasies fail—as they must in this witty, well-spun yarn. (Ecco, $23.95)
Bottom Line: Smells like a winner
Sleep No More
By Greg Iles
Geologist John Waters's girlfriend, Mallory Candler, is beautiful, crazy and dead. It's a mixed blessing for him, then, when her soul resurrects itself and wanders into the body of a sexy female real estate agent in Iles's thoroughly implausible and completely engaging thriller.
Letting the supernatural come out to roam his favorite setting, a Deep South fraught with psychologically complex situations, Iles sends Mallory's psychopathic jealousy bouncing from body to body: Anyone could be a shell for her scheming, stalking heart. Almost until the end, Iles keeps the secret of whether this extraordinary yarn is a genuine case of soul transmigration or an elaborate scam. Occasionally there are unintentionally laughable moments, such as when Mallory pops up in the big-man's trousers of Waters's womanizing business partner. ("You loved me then. And you will again," vows the poor possessed man.) But it's irresistible pass-the-popcorn fun watching the upstanding Waters trade his life, love and livelihood for a few afternoons of steamy mind-games with this nimble, purring psycho. (Putnam, $24.95)
Bottom Line: A spirited chiller
Mary Wells Lawrence
Still can't get "Plop Plop Fizz Fizz" out of your head after all these years? Now you know who to blame for the Alka-Seltzer jingle, not to mention "Flick your Bic." The first female CEO of a firm traded on the New York Stock Exchange, Mary Wells Lawrence ran the ad agency Wells Rich Greene. Why haven't more women followed as CEOs? Lawrence, 74, says, "When women get close to the top and look at what men do to be successful, a lot of them say, 'Do I want to work 24-hour days and give up everything else? Is that the best life has to offer?' "
Lawrence recounts her adventures in the male-dominated world of Madison Avenue—as well as her battles with uterine and breast cancers—in her book A Big Life in Advertising (Knopf, $26). "Women come up to me everywhere, and they're all singing the same tune," says Lawrence. "They're saying, 'I can't make up my mind. Am I really going to juggle my children and all the things I am interested in in order to throw myself into my career?' They really have choices. In the past we didn't." Her husband of 34 years, former Braniff Airlines CEO Harding Lawrence, who died in January of pancreatic cancer (she has two daughters from a previous marriage) supported her career fully; men, she, thinks, are the ones who get trapped. "For women there are many ideas of success. Men are only starting to understand that." Liza Hamm
- Contributors:
- Amy Waldman,
- Neil Graves,
- Debby Waldman,
- Erica Sanders,
- Arion Berger.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
