False Prophet. This item is unavailable.False Prophet

Even to case-hardened Detective Sergeant Pete Decker the brutal rape of Lilah Brecht, exquisite daughter of an aged Hollywood movie queen, is a disturbing act of violence. The only leads are provided by Lilah herself. However, Lilah's credibility is soon shattered when it emerges that she didn't physically see her rapist. It was only her 'gift' of second sight that enable her to 'image' her attacker. She claims that Decker is the only policeman who can truly understand and catch her attacker, who, she says, is still threatening her. Decker, however, is not so sure and is anxious to protect his heavily pregnant wife Rina from Lilah's alternately seductive and hysterical phone calls. But when Decker himself sees Lilah almost killed in a freak accident, he begins to think he may have judged her too harshly...

Part of my responsiblities as mass market managing editor of Ballantine includes handling reprints. In addition to updating front and back matter in order to keep everything up to date, I make sure that any text changes that need to be made are indeed made. This could include anything from factual information that an author wants to change to simple misspellings (although we pride ourselves in having many books with zero typos). Well, recently I received a letter that had originally been sent from a reader to Faye Kellerman, who sent it on to us. The reader wrote about how much she loves Faye's books, and she was shocked to find a few typos in one of the books. I reviewed her list of "errors," and lo and behold, a couple of them absolutely had to be changed. Whenever a reader does something like this, I like to respond with a letter of my own, along with a copy of the book with the corrections made. But in this case there was only a return address; nowhere was there a name. I looked at the address again; it sounded awful familiar. I searched the remnants of my limited brain and suddenly realized that the letter had come from one of my best friends' mothers. And I could see Mrs. R's style all over it. I immediately called my friend and told him about it; we decided to do nothing until the next reprint comes out, with the corrections. Then I'll send a copy of the book, with a note from me, thanking Mrs. R for all her help. I guess the world gets a little smaller every day. . . .

Mark Rifkin, Managing Editorial