Charade - Hardcover

Brown, Sandra

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0446516562 ISBN 13: 9780446516563

Publisher: Grand Central Pub, 1994

Synopsis

After Cat Delaney receives a heart transplant, she thinks that she can begin life anew by hosting a television show, but suddenly someone is murdering transplant recipients, and Cat is next on the list. Major ad/promo. Doubleday Main. Tour.

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Reviews

Soap opera star Cat Delaney gets a new heart--literally and figuratively speaking--in bestseller Brown's ( French Silk ; Where There's Smoke ) latest contemporary romance. The heart transplant that beautiful, arrogant Cat endures in the first chapter transforms her soul along with her cardiovascular system. If Brown had first established Cat's personality with some depth and credibility, that might have been the basis of an emotionally involving story. But since Cat is little more than a vessel for the concept, before we can blink, she is a good-hearted citizen who abandons stardom and Hollywood for San Antonio, Tex., where she hosts a local TV program featuring children up for adoption. Cat hardly has a chance to enjoy her change of heart and her new heartthrob, bad-boy crime novelist Alex Pierce, because a stalker is after her. Whatever suspense might have been activated by this scenario is immediately stymied as Brown rushes through events whereby three potential heart donors are knocked down like dominoes: obviously the stalker is a bereaved nut determined to kill all the transplant recipients who might have received his lover's heart. But Brown fails to develop even a modicum of tension, since the rushed pacing then slows to a crawl where nothing much happens except Cat's cliche-ridden romance with Alex. Too late in the novel, we finally get a more full and sympathetic characterization of Cat. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club selections; major ad/promo; author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The queen of Texas melodrama takes metaphor perhaps a step too far as she pits her heart-transplant-patient heroine against a serial killer obsessed with stopping her new heart. Having as a child survived Hodgkin's disease, her parents' double suicide, and life in a series of substandard foster homes, feisty redhead Cat Delaney is more than able to wisecrack her way through a heart transplant operation at the peak of her career. Famous as a star of the television soap opera Passages, Cat experiences both a literal and figurative change of heart after her surgery, abruptly opting to drop her acting career, move to San Antonio, and create a local news segment aimed at matching abandoned children with good adoptive homes. She breaks off an affair with Dr. Dean Spicer, her wealthy cardiologist, and falls madly in love with Alex Pierce (``His tongue was nimble, his appetite carnal''), a Houston cop turned mystery writer whose sudden appearance in her life may not be coincidental. When newspaper articles describing murders of other heart transplantees begin appearing in Cat's mailbox, she realizes she's being stalked by a lunatic obsessed with stilling the heart of a loved one who may or may not be her donor. As the anniversary of Cat's transplant nears, the threat of violence grows greater. But from which direction comes the danger?: From her hostile secretary, possibly related to a woman who was murdered on the day of her transplant? From the stepfather of one of Cat's orphan clients, whose greatest rival may have been Cat's donor? Or (horrors) from sexy Alex, whose past holds more secrets than she could ever guess? Highly schematic and hastily sketched, this nevertheless provides a satisfying dose of Brown's (Where There's Smoke, 1993, etc.) famously raunchy sex scenes (`` `I want to know I'm with a man. I want to be taken. I want--' `You want to be fucked.' ''), and a certain raw enthusiasm that will no doubt increase her legion of fans. (First printing of 300,000; Literary Guild main selection) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Grand Central Pub
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0446516562
• ISBN 13: 9780446516563
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 405