Someone to Watch Over Me

December 8, 2003
Night Whispers
, McNaught's first romantic suspense novel (after a host of historicals), hit the charts hard, and this solid follow-up looks to do the same. Legendary stage actress Leigh Kendall is starring in a Broadway play, lives in a fabulous apartment and adores her husband, Logan Manning, a handsome, rich and virile businessman. After an afternoon performance, she's off to meet Logan in their country cabin, where he's promised an evening of lust and love in front of a roaring fire. Her life changes forever when she drives over an embankment in a snowstorm and barely escapes death. After waking up bruised and battered in the hospital, she finds Logan missing, her rival performing her part in the play, a creepy stalker sending expensive flowers and the evil Michael Valente, a business acquaintance of her husband's, being suspiciously attentive. Leigh checks out of the hospital and begins a frantic search for Logan aided by a team of detectives from the NYPD. As the search intensifies, she begins to learn secrets that expose her golden marriage as a fraud and her husband as a serial cheater. A romantic subplot features two of the cops investigating her case, the chiseled Lt. Mitchell McCord and rookie detective Samantha Littleton, who partner up in more ways than one. Leigh proves to be a stalwart if privileged heroine who finds a knight in shining armor in an unexpected corner of her past. The suspense is not terribly suspenseful, and several plot threads go uncollected, but romance is McNaught's bread and butter and she serves it up in abundance. (Feb.)

Forecast:
Some of McNaught's fans are not happy with her switch from historical romance to contemporaries, but sales have yet to dip—expect this to move fast.