Tell Me No Secrets - Hardcover

Fielding, Joy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688088686 ISBN 13: 9780688088682

Publisher: William Morrow & Co, 1993

Synopsis

Haunted by the disappearance of her mother eight years before, no-nonsense prosecutor Jess Koster is shattered when the client she is defending from a brutal rapist also vanishes into thin air. 125,000 first printing. $100,000 ad/promo.

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Reviews

Although this latest vehicle by the author of See Jane Run ultimately reaches an ingeniously crafted finale, readers may tire of Fielding's (mostly irrelevant) plot detours and excessive emotional baggage--specifically, the protagonist's constant state of anxiety. Suspense along the way is minimal and often forced, while, for most of its length, the novel reads like a not especially compelling domestic drama. Jess Koster, a 30-year-old prosecutor in the Cook County (Ill.) state's attorney's office, overreacts to just about everyone and everything; she is particularly obsessed with her mother's unexplained disappearance eight years earlier. (A remark by her mother, in fact, is one of the book's many annoyingly repeated phrases.) The attenuated storyline snakes around three men in Jess's life; while they figure prominently in a clever denouement, their individual encounters with Jess exhibit little freshness. Jess's family relationships are unconvincingly strained, while her courtroom work proves mundane: in a pointless trial sequence, her strategy for winning a murder conviction, hailed by coworkers as "brilliant," will be old hat to mystery devotees. Because this heroine seems not to like herself--and displays few engaging qualities--it becomes difficult to like or empathize with her (often imaginary) plights. First serial to Cosmopolitan; Literary Guild main selection.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Eight years after her mother mysteriously disappeared on her way to a doctor's appointment, Chicago prosecutor Jess Koster's panic attacks have returned--as she fights to convict a sadistic rapist who may have killed his latest victim. But Rick Ferguson--the man who threatened to kill Connie DeVuono if she pressed charges and then smiled at the news of her disappearance--may not even be the man behind Jess's stifling fear. Puzzling over the question of who sent her a urine-soaked letter garnished with pubic hairs, she wonders ``how many men [she had] managed to alienate in her young life'' It's a good question for a workaholic prosecutor--especially when you add Jess's hostility toward her lovesick father, her controlling brother-in-law Barry Peppler, her bedroom-minded colleague Greg Oliver, and Terry Wales, the Crossbow Murderer she's trying to nail on murder one. Even the two men she can bring herself to trust--her provocative new romantic interest, Adam Stohn, a shoe salesman; and her protective ex-husband, Don Shaw, who turns out to be Rick Ferguson's own attorney--are pulling her apart by their appeals to her loyalty. Maybe she's just imagining seeing Ferguson's face in so many crowds. But she's not imagining the vandalism to her car or the break-in to her house; and the prognosis on her pet canary doesn't look too good either. Fielding (See Jane Run, 1991, etc.) has always been at her best when her soapy tales of female oppression have been sparked by a criminal interest, and despite a wildly improbable (though politically correct) climax, the story she has to tell this time is a corker that runs rings around Mary Higgins Clark. Don't even think of starting this anywhere near bedtime. (First serial to Cosmopolitan; Literary Guild Triple Selection for July) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow & Co
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0688088686
• ISBN 13: 9780688088682
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352