While on vacation on the tropical island of St. Marks, Barrington unexpectedly has to defend an American woman, Allison Manning, accused of murder.
She claims her husband died of a heart attack while they sailed across the Atlantic.
Racing to prove the young widow innocent of any wrongdoing pits Stone against a determined protector standing on the verge of becoming the next Prime Minister of St. Marks.
While hoping he doesn’t lose the new love of his life to his own newfound ambition, Stone uses every skill in his possession to protect his client.
Like the other books, there is plenty of gratuitous sex — if you like that kind of thing. 😀
American television producer and screenwriter, and founder of the production company Shondaland. In 2007, 2013, and 2021, Rhimes was named by Time to the Time 100, their annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Oddly, I didn’t really know anything about Shonda Rhimes before reading her memoir, Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand in the Sun, and Be Your Own Person (2015).
Shonda describes how some criticism from her sister inspired her to say YES to everything for a year. Not easy as she was an obese, insecure workaholic at the time. She’s hired a publicist to avoid public appearances. 😀
With three children at home and three hit television shows, it was easy for Shonda to say she was simply too busy. But in truth, she was also afraid. …
This poignant, intimate, and hilarious memoir explores Shonda’s life before her Year of Yes—from her nerdy, book-loving childhood to her devotion to creating television characters who reflected the world she saw around her. The book chronicles her life after her Year of Yes had begun—when Shonda forced herself out of the house and onto the stage; when she learned to explore, empower, applaud, and love her truest self. …
“Honest, raw, and revelatory” (The Washington Post) …
Hey. Shonda lost over 100 pounds through the process. Respect.
In the last chapter she defends her decision NOT to marry. A successful career woman, Shonda has adopted 2 daughters. Had a third by gestational surrogacy.
She’s too busy to properly spend enough time with a husband.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube. Shonda reflects back on the book 10-years-later.
For months, Lucas Davenport’s men have been tracking a vicious woman bank robber named Candy, and when they finally catch up with her, she does not go quietly.
In the ensuing shoot-out, she dies — and Davenport’s nightmare starts.
Her associates are even worse than she was, particularly her husband, a deeply violent man who swears an appropriate revenge: first he will find the names of those responsible; then he will kill those nearest and dearest to them, just the way they did Candy.
So it begins. The husband of one officer is shot and killed. The wife of another is ambushed at work. When a third attack is thwarted, the pattern becomes clear to Davenport, and with an urgency born of rage and terror, he presses the hunt, desperately trying to track down the killers before they can strike again, before they can reach out for Davenport’s own loved ones. But in this effort, he may already be too late.
Dirt (1996) is the 2nd novel in the Stone Barrington series.
Quite good. As was the first, New York Dead.
When poison-pen columnist Amanda Dart herself becomes the victim of an anonymous gossipmonger, she enlists the help of New York P.I. Stone Barrington to uncover the culprit, someone out to expose the peccadilloes of other influential gossip columnists, as well.
Dirt is the title of a faxed newsletter focused on dishing the dirty secrets of gossip columnists. An interesting premise.
Plenty of sex in this book, as there was in the first.
Stuart Woods published multiple books every year over his career.
New York Dead (1991) is the first novel in the Stone Barrington series.
Barrington is a detective forced to retire from the sexist, racist, corrupt N.Y. Police force because of a cover-up. He decides to become a lawyer/private investigator.
An intriguing premise. ➙ Barrington happens to see a woman jump / fall (?) from a 12 story balcony. Shockingly, she’s still alive when put into the ambulance.
BUT the ambulance has an accident a few blocks distant — and the woman disappears.
Shadow Prey (1990) is #2 in the Lucas Davenport series.
Sandford had trouble writing the SECOND book. In fact, he tore up the first version. Completely rewrote this book — which is intense, but very good.
As a reporter, Sandford was very interested in the plight of First Nation Americans.
A slumlord and a welfare supervisor butchered in Minneapolis . . . a rising political star executed in Manhattan . . . an influential judge taken in Oklahoma City . . . All the homicides have the same grisly method — the victim’s throat is slashed with an Indian ceremonial knife – and in every case the twisted trail leads back through the Minnesota Native American community to an embodiment of primal evil known as Shadow Love.
Once unleashed, Shadow Love’s need to kill cannot be checked, even by those who think they control him. Soon he will be stalking Lucas Davenport — and the woman he loves…
Never get involved with a cop: Lieutenant Lucas Davenport has been warning women for years, but now he finds himself on dangerous ground with a policewoman named Lily Rothenburg, on assignment from New York to help investigate the murders.
Both have previous commitments, but neither can stop, and as their affair grows more intense, so too does the mayhem surrounding them, until the combined passion and violence threaten to spin out of control and engulf them both.
Together, Lucas and Lily must stalk the drugged-out, desperate world of the city’s meanest streets to flush out Shadow Love — not knowing they are now the objects of his deadliest desires….
In fact, Sandford first decides on the villain. And then starts writing — trying to decide how Lucas Davenport could catch the serial killer.
An art history professor and writer and cheerful pervert, James Qatar had a hobby: he took secret photographs of women and turned them into highly sexual drawings.
One day, he took the hobby a step further and… well, one thing led to another, and he had to kill her. A man in his position couldn’t be too careful, after all. And you know something? He liked it.
Already faced with a welter of confusion in his personal life, Deputy Chief Lucas Davenport decides to take this case himself, hoping that some straightforward police work will clear his head, but as the trail begins to take some unexpected turns, it soon becomes clear that nothing is straightforward about this killer. The man is learning as he goes, Lucas realizes, taking great strides forward with each murder. He is becoming a monster — and Lucas may have no choice but to walk right into his lair…
Having now read most of his books, this is one of my favourites.
My Mom liked it too.
The chief justice of the Supreme Court is about to be defamed, his career destroyed, by a powerful gossip website that specializes in dirt on celebs and politicians. Their top reporter has written an exposé claiming that he had liaisons with an escort, a young woman prepared to tell the world her salacious tale. But the chief justice is not without allies and his greatest supporter is determined to stop the story in its tracks.
Nick Heller is a private spy—an intelligence operative based in Boston, hired by lawyers, politicians, and even foreign governments. A high-powered investigator with a penchant for doing things his own way, he’s called to Washington, DC, to help out in this delicate, potentially explosive situation.
Nick has just forty-eight hours to disprove the story about the chief justice. But when the call girl is found murdered, the case takes a dangerous turn, and Nick resolves to find the mastermind behind the conspiracy before anyone else falls victim to the maelstrom of political scandal and ruined reputations predicated upon one long-buried secret.
Rick McCharles 