SHADOW WOMAN

Marriage doesn't stop Jane Whitefield (Dance for the Dead, 1996, etc.) from taking on one last hazardous disappearing act for a client whose pursuers just won't give up. As part of her agreement to tie the knot with her longtime suitor Dr. Carey McKinnon, Jane promises she'll stop helping people to vanish. All she wants is to fade into the woodwork- -which is precisely how she thought she'd already helped Pete Hatcher, the Las Vegas bagman who knew too much about the shady doings of his bosses at Pleasure, Inc. But Hatcher, a sociable fellow who can't resist the ladies, hasn't been able to adapt to the monklike identity Jane created for him in Denver; a few careless moves, and Pleasure's hired killers are onto him. And these aren't ordinary killers: Earl Bliss gets off on tracking and killing people, and his partner, Linda Thompson, keeps up her energy level by inventing erotic fantasies in which she watches Earl kill men she's gotten involved with. When they fail to take out Hatcher, he puts in a frantic call to Jane—who leaves Carey waiting in the old homestead while she goes on the road this one last time. So while Jane's spiriting Hatcher out of Denver and Earl is hustling to pick up her trail—which will lead to a bravura chase on foot through Glacier National Park—Linda takes the search to Jane's home turf by following her paper trail to upstate New York, introducing herself to lonely Carey, and mining Jane's house for every clue she can scrounge about her quarry's current whereabouts—a job made all too easy by the fact that well-meaning Carey hasn't a clue about how to keep a life-or- death secret. Jane's third adventure is another masterfully inverted detective story—you root for the prey instead of the murderous investigators. The suspense is unrelenting.