The Last Good Night; No One Can Ever Leave the Past Behind

Happily married anchorwoman Laura Barnett has spent the last twenty years trying to erase the memories of one horrible night, but when she encounters a voice from the past, her worst fears come true. 30,000 first printing.

The revelation of a nasty, melodramatic secret brings disgrace, danger, and redemption to a glamorous but self-absorbed TV news-anchor, in the fifth and most commercial novel yet from Listfield (Acts of Love, 1994, etc.). Even if Laura Barnett's cool, blond, telegenic beauty is mostly due to plastic surgery, her decade of ambitious, small-town newscasting triumphs have blessed her with the coveted job of co-anchoring the national news. Add to this her perfectly dedicated academic husband David, her infant daughter Sophie, a tony Manhattan apartment, a nanny she can trust, and a salary large enough to make designer dresses a wiggle instead of a stretch, and it's a wonder that Barnett has a gripe. But whine she does: about no one appreciating her talent, hollowness of fame, and the tension of dealing with a glossy public image that she can't control. Then who should show up among her throng of stage-door admirers but the annoying Jack Pierce--a bony twerp in a seersucker suit who took the fall for what may have been a murder committed in self-defense by Barnett when she had a different face, different looks, and a different name. After pestering Barnett, he vanishes at about the same time as Barnett's daughter. Barnett's career comes tumbling down as the kidnapping compels her to confess her trashy past to her husband, her boss, the cops, and a vapid Vanity Fair reporter. Such reckless truth-telling brings on a predictable but unconvincing redemption, followed by a violent confrontation with Pierce, though it's not clear at the end if Listfield's feckless heroine hasn't swapped one delusion for another. ``I'm damaged goods,'' she snaps sarcastically to her fatuous, Dan Ratherish co-anchor Quinn Hartley. ``The best I can hope for is a shot on Oprah.'' Smoothly told, realistically detailed cautionary tale buried in a frothy view of female yuppie wish fulfillment, roman … clef media gossip, and soap-opera morality. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Laura Barrett has it all: she's just been made coanchor of the national network news; her baby daughter, Sophie, is a joy; and she and husband David are very much in love. Then Jack Pierce appears, asking Laura why she left him years earlier, never to return. Soon, we learn of Laura's past as the illegitimate daughter of a slovenly German immigrant married to an abusive motel owner in a jerkwater Florida town. There, at age 16, Laura accidentally killed a guest who had been paying her for sex?and left Jack to take the blame as she reinvented herself. Then one morning the unthinkable happens: Laura's daughter, Sophie, is kidnapped. The investigation forces Laura to reveal her past, which threatens her marriage, her job, and her life. This novel by the author of Acts of Love (LJ 6/15/94) offers a suspenseful and interesting look at the life of TV's elite. For popular collections.
-?Barbara Maslekoff, Ohioana Lib., Columbus
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Laura Barnett has just been named coanchor of the nightly news, but no professional triumph can protect her from the dark secret in her past. Now, the man who took the blame for a horrifying incident that occurred when Laura was a teen has come back into her life. The tenuous net of security Laura has spun threatens to dissolve. Her marriage is coming apart, her job is in jeopardy, and then her child is kidnapped. As the police work frantically to find her daughter, Laura realizes she must confront her past to escape it. Only after a heart-stopping climax does she finally understand that although she has lost nearly everything, she has redeemed herself. Although Listfield's prose and plot twists occasionally resemble the latest soap opera, she does write a gripping mystery. And while it's hard to sympathize with the shallow, self-serving way Laura behaves, it's not hard to become absorbed in the nail-biting, knuckle-whitening suspense that Listfield expertly creates and develops. Emily Melton