Risking Elizabeth - Softcover

McCloskey, Walter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0425164136 ISBN 13: 9780425164136

Publisher: Berkley, 1998

Synopsis

When he falls in love with the wealthy femme fatale Elizabeth Bennett, lawyer Harry Preston descends to scandal, corruption, and hedonism in a New Orleans far different from the one of his youth. Reprint.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Played out against a decadent background of masked balls, old money and family secrets in New Orleans, McCloskey's debut is drenched in atmosphere?unfortunately, at the expense of suspense. Just before Mardi Gras in 1981, widowed lawyer Harry Preston meets heiress Elizabeth Bennett at a party in his grandmother's historic French Quarter home. Elizabeth has just decided to leave her husband, Jack, a fortune hunter addicted to cocaine and to collecting Nazi memorabilia. Against his better judgment, Harry finds himself both her lawyer and her lover. No sooner has he disposed of her problem with a blackmailing mobster and some compromising photographs, than Harry receives a panicked phone call from Elizabeth summoning him to her home. When he arrives, he finds Elizabeth gone and Jack floating dead in the swimming pool. As Harry searches for Elizabeth, the task is complicated by the arrival of her estranged mother, intent on gaining control of Elizabeth's fortune by having her daughter declared incompetent?and the discovery that Elizabeth has abducted Harry's nine-year-old son, Ike. With the help of Elizabeth's friend Sally Montrose, Harry tracks Ike and Elizabeth to her grandfather's isolated island plantation?keeping just one step ahead of a pair of hired killers. There's a frightening confrontation on the island before Harry discovers who has masterminded the murderous plot to steal Elizabeth's inheritance. While McCloskey's engaging portrait of Crescent City society is first-rate, a surplus of characters and subplots with no real payoff create a very long wait for readers before he attends to the real business of murder.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

There is nothing easy about the New Orleans of McCloskey's debut novel about Harry Preston, who was raised in Connecticut but has put down roots in New Orleans; he lives at the heart of the city's establishment. Recovering from the murder of his psychiatric social worker wife by a disturbed client, Preston lives with his young son, Ike, in the carriage house of his grandmother's French Quarter mansion and is a junior partner in the law firm headed by cousin Charles Haynesworth, always calm, dignified, and ruthless. At a carnival party, Preston meets Elizabeth Berenson Bennett, the beautiful, troubled granddaughter of Jewish tycoon Saul Berenson, a former Haynesworth client long snubbed by the city's casually anti-Semitic elite. After a romantic interlude, Elizabeth seeks Preston's help; soon he's dealing with murderous thugs, dead bodies, Ike's disappearance, and a cruel conspiracy of greed and grudge. Elizabeth is at once affecting, spoiled, and erratic, which keeps Preston off balance as the two cooperate to reveal the arrogance and cruelty of a claustrophobic, decadent culture. Mary Carroll

About this edition

• Publisher: Berkley
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0425164136
• ISBN 13: 9780425164136
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 320