Cold Heart: A Novel - Hardcover

La Plante, Lynda

4

1,959 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375500049 ISBN 13: 9780375500046

Publisher: Random House, 1999

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Having established her reputation with the enormously successful, two-time Emmy Award-winning television series Prime Suspect, author/screenwriter Lynda La Plante enhanced it with her more recent popular CBS TV miniseries, Bella Mafia. The same unbeatable storytelling power she brings to her films is the engine that drives her new thriller, Cold Heart, from its disturbing beginning to its shocking climax.

A single gunshot into a Beverly Hills swimming pool ends the life of movie mogul Harry Nathan, a man with so many enemies--including a widow and two ex-wives--that the challenge for PI Lorraine Page at first seems to be the surfeit of suspects. Newly established as an independent private investigator, Lorraine comes to the case hungry and determined to succeed--but Harry Nathan's death is the beginning, not the end, of a trail of lust and conspiracy leading to the darkest corners of the international art world. A sordid trail of video evidence implicates other leading Hollywood figures in the case, while Lorraine finds her own investigations hampered by the personal intervention of new police chief Jake Burton, a man who appears to know everything bad about her but still seems determined to know more.

As the failures of her past come back to haunt her, Lorraine finds that solving this murder is no longer just a job, it's about recapturing her own self-worth. A first-rate crime story, a love story, and more--it's precisely the kind of superior suspense novel we've come to expect from Lynda La Plante, one of the preeminent originators of realistic crime drama.

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Review:

Lorraine Page, heroine of Cold Shoulder and Cold Blood, returns with a new face, new wardrobe, new office, new assistant, new dog, and new love--all but the last, L.A. police lieutenant Jake Burton, courtesy of a big bonus earned on her previous case. Lynda La Plante, creator of the PBS series Prime Suspect, puts Lorraine right in the middle of a murderous art swindle scheme. When Harry Nathan, a charismatic producer, director, and collector, is murdered in his Brentwood swimming pool, Lorraine's hired to find out who killed him and then to track the missing art or the millions it's been turned into. Which of Harry's wives had the most to gain from his death? Why is faded ex-movie star Raymond Vallance, Harry's closest friend, still hanging around? Is it something to do with the porno tapes Harry's been blackmailing him over, or was he involved in the swindle, too? It would take a miniseries to unravel all the mcguffins and red herrings La Plante puts in Lorraine's--and the reader's--way. There's the accidental death of her new assistant, Decker--but Lorraine's too busy with her new lover to connect it to the Harry Nathan case. And the attacks on her own life--is there someone from her past seeking vengeance for something she did when she was a cop? Fans of her two previous Lorraine Page suspense novels won't want to miss this one. --Jane Adams

From the Back Cover:

Praise for Lynda La Plante's previous crime thrillers

Cold Shoulder

"The scenes keep moving as if their wheels were greased, and there is terrific energy in the simple, driving, cinematic plot."
--The New York Times Book Review

"This gripping crime story . . . strong-arms its readers--all the way to its double-whammy climax."

--People

"Rarely has a British novelist penetrated the cultural undertow of American crime and law enforcement as shrewdly and incisively as Lynda La Plante in Cold Shoulder. Raises enough issues of power, gender, sex, and corruption to keep the pages turning almost by themselves."

--San Francisco Chronicle

Cold Blood

"Great fun . . . The intricate plot slaloms from Los Angeles sex clubs to New Orleans voodoo priestesses without letting the reader up for air."

--Los Angeles Times

"So compelling that La Plante risks having her TV credentials eclipsed by her distinction as a crime novelist."

--People

"Complex plotting and a merciless eye toward human nature."
--Chicago Tribune

"La Plante is so knowledgeable about good detective work that we're nailed to our seats."

--San Francisco Chronicle

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