Desperate Measures

August 20, 2018
A killer is stalking petite blond women on Manhattan’s East Side in Edgar-winner Woods’s diverting 47th novel featuring New York lawyer Stone Barrington (after Turbulence). One intended victim, Faith Barnacle, whom Stone recently hired as his personal pilot, manages to elude the unknown killer by crashing through a window of the seedy Lexington Avenue hotel where he’s held her captive. Luckily, she falls into a dumpster and suffers only minor injuries. Meanwhile, Stone assists a wealthy heiress he meets by chance with securing a divorce from her no-good husband, the book’s other villain. Dino Bacchetti, Stone’s police commissioner pal, lends a helping hand as needed. As usual, Woods keeps the tone light, as shown by the many pages devoted to the flirtatious banter between Stone and the book’s several attractive, available women. At the end, he surprises the reader by not neatly tying up every thread. Series fans will be satisfied, but those who prefer realistic police procedurals will have to look elsewhere. Agent: Anne Sibbald, Janklow & Nesbit.

August 15, 2018
Consumer alert: Sleeping with Stone Barrington (Turbulence, 2018, etc.) can be hazardous to your health.Moments after accepting his dismissal by model Kelly Smith at the East Side Heliport, Stone literally bumps into pilot Faith Barnacle. He apologizes for jostling her and incidentally salves his wounded ego by giving her a lift back to Midtown, offering her a job as his personal pilot and head of his flight department, and taking her to bed. Since Faith has indicated a limit of three intimate encounters before she dumps any man, Stone stops at two. It's no big deal, and besides, there are bigger fish to fry. New York is being terrorized by a killer who stalks, strips, rapes, and strangles beautiful blondes, then scrupulously cleans and redresses them and dumps them. Faith is scared, but she's also independent. Even after Stone provides her with Jimbo, a minder from the security firm Strategic Services, she sneaks out of her Turtle Bay apartment in search of soap and promptly gets kidnapped. Inconsolable, Stone consoles himself with Priscilla Scott, an aspiring divorcée who literally falls into his lap while he's sitting in a luggage store, and recently widowed Edith Beresford, whose ex-husband had the decency to die before he could change the will leaving her everything. Donald Trask, the hedge fund manager Priscilla is divorcing, is a violent man with a short temper, but Stone is Stone, and although Priscilla gets stabbed to death shortly after the divorce, hours after changing her own will, Stone doesn't, and NYPD Detective Sean Muldoon (the smart one) and Dante Calabrese (the kid) can't help regarding him as a prime suspect. Still on the horizon are deputy mayor Caroline Whitehorn and her highly competitive and equally beautiful sister. Anything might happen with them.A serial killer, a violent abduction, an acrimonious divorce, the hero suspected of murder--and all of it serenely weightless, in the episodic manner of a Road Runner cartoon without the laughs. Who cares what happens to the most alluring woman when the next one is just around the corner?

COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 15, 2018
A serial killer is targeting pretty, petite blond women on Manhattan's East Side, a description that fits Stone Barrington's newest employee all too well. Barrington met Faith Barnacle in a heliport on his return from Europe just after being dumped by a woman who had given him up for her CIA career. After bedding Faith twice, he hires her as his personal pilot and provides bodyguard security because of the serial-killer peril. But she chafes at being guarded and nearly becomes the next murder victim, thus faring better than Priscilla Scott, a woman who literally falls into Barrington's lap when the heel of her shoe breaks. Barrington provides treatment for Scott's sprained ankle, and offers legal advice and more; but her furious about-to-be-ex-husband becomes a threat. Despite briefly becoming a murder suspect himself, the urbane Barrington banters with his pal Police Commissioner Dino Bacchetti, and is never lacking for female companionship. In Woods' reliably smooth style, his latest, set as usual in the milieu of the rich and beautiful, even serial murders come to lack menace. Just the ticket for those craving a certain kind of escape.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

May 15, 2018

Stone Barrington is back, and as usual a plot summary hasn't materialized with him, but Woods repeatedly turns out No. 1 New York Times best sellers.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 15, 2018
Consumer alert: Sleeping with Stone Barrington (Turbulence, 2018, etc.) can be hazardous to your health.Moments after accepting his dismissal by model Kelly Smith at the East Side Heliport, Stone literally bumps into pilot Faith Barnacle. He apologizes for jostling her and incidentally salves his wounded ego by giving her a lift back to Midtown, offering her a job as his personal pilot and head of his flight department, and taking her to bed. Since Faith has indicated a limit of three intimate encounters before she dumps any man, Stone stops at two. It's no big deal, and besides, there are bigger fish to fry. New York is being terrorized by a killer who stalks, strips, rapes, and strangles beautiful blondes, then scrupulously cleans and redresses them and dumps them. Faith is scared, but she's also independent. Even after Stone provides her with Jimbo, a minder from the security firm Strategic Services, she sneaks out of her Turtle Bay apartment in search of soap and promptly gets kidnapped. Inconsolable, Stone consoles himself with Priscilla Scott, an aspiring divorc�e who literally falls into his lap while he's sitting in a luggage store, and recently widowed Edith Beresford, whose ex-husband had the decency to die before he could change the will leaving her everything. Donald Trask, the hedge fund manager Priscilla is divorcing, is a violent man with a short temper, but Stone is Stone, and although Priscilla gets stabbed to death shortly after the divorce, hours after changing her own will, Stone doesn't, and NYPD Detective Sean Muldoon (the smart one) and Dante Calabrese (the kid) can't help regarding him as a prime suspect. Still on the horizon are deputy mayor Caroline Whitehorn and her highly competitive and equally beautiful sister. Anything might happen with them.A serial killer, a violent abduction, an acrimonious divorce, the hero suspected of murder--and all of it serenely weightless, in the episodic manner of a Road Runner cartoon without the laughs. Who cares what happens to the most alluring woman when the next one is just around the corner?

COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.