Before I Say Good-Bye (40 page)

“Seeking tranquillity, Menley and Adam rent Remember
House on Cape Cod, where strange things begin to happen. Incidents occur which make Menley relive the horror of the accident and make Adam fear for Hannah’s safety.

“Menley and Adam become involved with Scott Covey, a strikingly handsome but impecunious young man, who is suspected of murder when his wealthy young bride of only three months drowns in a storm. Sympathetic to his plight, Menley persuades her husband to take on his case.

“Step by step, they are drawn into a dark and threatening web of events that disrupt this seemingly peaceful town.
Remember Me
builds to a climax as Menley faces a mounting threat to her sanity—and to her life.”

• Your suspense novel
Let Me Call You Sweetheart
has an unusual twist—a plot revolving around plastic surgery. What inspired this theme?

“The idea of using plastic surgery as a theme emanated from a conversation with my longtime editor, Michael Korda. He raised the question: What if a plastic surgeon keeps giving the exact same face to a number of women? I found the idea intriguing.”

• What is the plot of
Let Me Call You Sweetheart
?

“Kerry McGrath, a young assistant prosecutor, learns that her ten-year-old daughter, Robin, has been injured in a car accident while out with her father, Kerry’s ex-husband, Bob Kinellen. Robin’s face has been cut by flying glass and she has to be taken to the
hospital. When Kerry arrives there, Robin is in surgery with the prominent plastic surgeon Dr. Charles Smith.

“A week later, Kerry is in Dr. Smith’s office with Robin, to have her stitches removed. There, Kerry sees a young woman, who appears to be in her mid-twenties, a cloud of dark hair framing her face. ‘I know you,’ she thought. ‘But from where? That face—I have seen her before.’ The woman’s name, she finds out, is Barbara Tompkins, a name which means nothing to her. On her next visit to Dr. Smith’s office, Kerry sees another woman with the same face. Her name is Pamela Worth—a name also unknown to her.

“Kerry cannot get the face out of her mind and starts having nightmares. In the first, she is in the doctor’s waiting room and sees a young woman lying on the floor, a knotted cord twisted around her neck. In the next, sweetheart roses are scattered around her body. Now Kerry knew. The women resembled Suzanne Reardon, the victim in the Sweetheart Murder Case.

“Nearly eleven years earlier, when Kerry McGrath had just begun work in the county prosecutor’s office, Suzanne Reardon had been murdered. Her husband had been convicted of the murder. Was there a connection between the crime and the look-alikes of the victim?

“Kerry decides to probe into the Sweetheart Murder Case, knowing that it may jeopardize her career, but unaware that there is more at stake—her life and that of her daughter. The story builds to a climax as the murderer targets Kerry and Robin for his next strike.”

• You wrote a suspense novel with a Christmas theme,
Silent Night.
What is it about?

“Catherine Dornan has come to New York with her two sons, ten-year-old Michael and seven-year-old Brian, to be near Tom, her husband, who is lying critically ill in the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. It is Christmas Eve and they are on Fifth Avenue, near Rockefeller Center. Later on, they plan to go to the hospital to give Tom the St. Christopher medal that saved her father’s life in World War II by deflecting a bullet; Catherine’s mother and little Brian firmly believe that it will make him well. Suddenly, Catherine realizes that her wallet with the St. Christopher medal is missing and that Brian has disappeared.

“Cally Hunter, a woman from the other side of the tracks, is also on Fifth Avenue on Christmas Eve, looking for a man who sells dolls on the street so she can buy one cheaply for her four-year-old daughter, Gigi. Cally had just served a fifteen-month prison sentence for aiding her brother, a cop killer. When Cally sees Catherine’s wallet drop to the sidewalk, she grabs it and makes off. Brian sees what has happened and knows he must retrieve the St. Christopher’s medal. He follows Cally into the subway, all the way into her dilapidated building in lower Manhattan. As he hovers around Cally’s apartment door, a man comes out and yanks him in. The man is Jimmy Siddons, Cally’s brother, who has escaped from prison and has come to get money from Cally.

“Jimmy Siddons abducts Brian, as traveling with a little boy at Christmas is the ideal camouflage for his
planned escape to Canada in a stolen car. The story reaches its climax when Jimmy realizes he is being followed and Brian knows that Jimmy is about to kill him. Brian decides to take action. He knows he has a mission to fulfill—to bring the St. Christopher medal to his father.”

• Describe the plot of
Moonlight Becomes You.

“Maggie Holloway, a young photographer, becomes the target of a killer with a twisted mind when she discovers a link between the murder of her stepmother, Nuala Moore, and several deaths at Latham Manor, a magnificent Newport mansion, now a residence for wealthy retirees.

“She has a chance encounter with Nuala at a cocktail party in Manhattan—a family reunion for the Moore clan of Newport. Nuala, a painter, had brightened her childhood, but they lost touch after her divorce from her father. When Nuala invites Maggie to visit her in Newport, she readily accepts. Nuala plans a dinner for a group of friends to welcome her, but when Maggie arrives, she finds the house ransacked and Nuala dead.

“Nuala had planned to sell her house and move into Latham Manor, but changed her mind at the last moment. Maggie learns that just the day before she died, Nuala had changed her will, leaving the house and everything she owned to her. Nuala’s only request was that Maggie visit her friend Greta Shipley at Latham Manor as often as possible. In carrying out Nuala’s wish, Maggie gets to know the other residents and
learns that several women there had died suddenly.

“When Maggie accompanies Greta to the cemetery to visit Nuala’s grave and those of her other friends, she notices something odd. She decides to return and take photographs. When she goes back with the pictures, she makes a strange discovery, not only about Nuala’s grave, but also the graves of four other women who recently died at Latham Manor. Soon after, Greta Shipley herself dies and Maggie begins her own investigation.

“As Maggie begins to unravel the thread linking Nuala’s murder to the deaths of the women at Latham Manor, she comes closer and closer to uncovering the identity of a killer with his own strange signature. What she does not know is that she is now the killer’s target and that each clue brings her closer to an unimaginable fate.”

•
 My Gal Sunday: Henry and Sunday Stories
revolves around Henry Britland IV, a former president of the United States, and his bride, Congresswoman Sandra O’Brien. Tell us about Henry and Sunday.

“Henry is young, rich and handsome, the scion of a wealthy and influential family. Sandra, known as Sunday, is the daughter of a New Jersey motorman. I derived the idea for these characters from my favorite radio series as a child, the once wildly popular soap opera
Our Gal Sunday
.”

• What are the stories about?

“The four stories in
My Gal Sunday
deal with the indictment of Henry’s close friend and former Secretary
of State for the murder of his mistress, the kidnapping of Sunday, the mysterious disappearance from the Britlands’ yacht of a Latin American prime minister and a Christmas story about a little boy who has been abducted and is reunited with his family by Henry and Sunday.”

• Some of the characters in
My Gal Sunday
are portrayed tongue-in-cheek. Isn’t that unusual in your writings?

“In my novels, I set out to scare people. Here, it is suspense with a touch of whimsy.”

• How did you acquire the knowledge of the presidential lifestyle and Secret Service protocol reflected in these stories?

“I have been a guest at the Bush and Clinton White Houses and also spent time in Washington doing research on protection of former presidents by the Secret Service.”

• What is the theme of your novel
Pretend You Don’t See Her
?

“It revolves around a young woman who has to go into the federal witness protection program after witnessing a murder.

“Lacey Farrell, a real estate agent in the New York firm of Parker & Parker, is asked by Isabelle Waring to handle the sale of the apartment of her daughter, Heather Landi, a young singer and actress who had been killed in a car accident on her way back from a
weekend of skiing in Vermont. Isabelle never believed that Heather’s death was an accident and had moved into her apartment, obsessively looking for clues to her death. Heather’s father, however, famed restaurateur Jimmy Landi, does not share her doubts. He insists that Isabelle, his former wife, accept their daughter’s death and sell the apartment. Lacey takes a prospective buyer to see it—Curtis Caldwell, a lawyer from a prestigious law firm. He makes an immediate offer. It is with horror that Lacey encounters him at the apartment later that day and realizes that he is Isabelle’s killer.

“Isabelle had made a dying wish to Lacey—to take a sheaf of papers to Heather’s father. They were Heather’s journal and, she believed, held the key to her death. To keep her word, Lacey does not give the papers to the police and before handing them to Jimmy Landi, makes a copy for herself. While Lacey is in trouble with the police for removing evidence from the crime scene, her description of the killer enables her to identify him—Sandy Savarano, a professional hitman, who had eluded jail by staging his own death some years earlier. Savarano now receives orders to silence Lacey, who knows more about Isabelle’s and Heather’s deaths than would allow her to live.”

• Your novel
You Belong to Me,
has an intriguing topic. Tell us about it.

“Women traveling alone are receptive to romance. Even sophisticated women can be gullible and lured
into dubious, sometimes even fatal, relationships by men who prey on them.

“Regina Clausen, a very successful, forty-three-year-old investment banker, had been traveling alone on a segment of the world cruise of the luxury liner
Gabrielle.
She had disembarked in Hong Kong, saying she would rejoin the ship when it docked in Japan. Her departure aroused no suspicion. Regina Clausen, however, did not return to the ship and was never seen again.

“Her case is discussed, three years later, during a radio program about vanished women on the New York–based, syndicated call-in show
Ask Dr. Susan
, hosted by psychologist Susan Chandler. A smart, attractive woman in her early thirties, she had been a district attorney before changing careers. Realizing that her program on vanished women has triggered off a series of murders, she starts to investigate the case of Regina Clausen’s disappearance . . . and becomes a target for the killer.”

• In your novel
We’ll Meet Again
medical issues are central to the plot. What are these?

“The inner workings of an HMO, in which patients’ needs are secondary to financial considerations, the choice of ending or prolonging life and risky medical experiments are themes in the novel.

“The novel begins with the murder of Dr. Gary Lasch—prominent Greenwich, Connecticut, doctor and founder of an HMO, Remington Health Management—who is found dead in his study at home, his
skull crushed by a blow with a heavy bronze sculpture and his wife, Molly, found in bed covered with blood. Molly claims to have no memory of events the night of the crime. Based on the housekeeper’s testimony incriminating her, Molly is charged with his murder. As a conviction seems inevitable, her lawyer plea-bargains the charge down to manslaughter.

“Released on parole from prison six years later, Molly asserts her innocence. She asks an old schoolmate, Fran Simmons, an investigative reporter and anchor for a true-crime series, to research and produce a program on Gary Lasch’s death. In probing into the private life of Gary Lasch and the affairs of Remington Health Management, they become enmeshed in a web of intrigue and themselves targets for murder.”

• What is your next novel?

“Titled
The Street Where You Live
, it is set in Spring Lake, New Jersey, where I recently bought a Victorian house.

“Following the acrimonious breakup of her marriage and the searing experience of being pursued by an obsessed stalker, criminal defense attorney Emily Graham accepts an offer to leave Albany and work in a major law firm in Manhattan.

“Feeling a need for roots, she buys her ancestral home, an old Victorian house in the historic New Jersey seaside resort town of Spring Lake. Her family had sold the house in 1892, after one of Emily’s forebears, Madeline Shapley, then still a young girl, disappeared.

“Now, more than a century later, as the house is
being renovated and the backyard excavated for a pool, the skeleton of a young woman is found. She is identified as Martha Lawrence, who had disappeared only four years earlier in Spring Lake. Within her skeletal hand is another woman’s finger bone with a ring still on it—a Shapley family heirloom.

“In seeking to find the link between her family’s past and the recent murder, Emily becomes a threat to a devious and seductive killer, who has chosen her as his next victim.”

• Having reached the pinnacle of success, could you visualize a life of leisure?

“No—never. Somebody once said, ‘If you want to be happy for a year, win the lottery. If you want to be happy for a lifetime, love what you do.’ That’s the way it is for me.”

Turn the page to read an excerpt from

Daddy’s Gone A Hunting