"High drama and complex mystery keep you turning the pages"

Leigh Kendall had it all -- a highly successful career on the Broadway stage, a handsome husband who adored her, and a beautiful Manhattan penthouse. To celebrate her birthday and the outrageously popular opening of her new show, her husband, Logan Manning, threw a party, and organized a more private tryst for the two of them the following day at an isolated cabin on the mountainous land that he recently purchased for their vacation home. Leigh was to meet him there after her Sunday matinee performance, and drove out in a huge blizzard. She never made it.

Driving -- or forced -- off the road and into an icy lake, she awakens in a hospital with severe wounds and no idea where Logan is. Two tough city detectives are looking for him, but when he doesn't materialize, they turn their suspicions on his wife. Leigh must first cope with losing her husband, and then with being the prime suspect in his disappearance. A shady business partner offers his assistance, but his felonious past may be more of a hindrance than a help. And she can't keep herself from doubting his motives even as he pledges his assistance.

Judith McNaught has created a tense, twisted suspense that grabs readers by the heart from the first page and doesn't let go until the very end. Leigh is a strong yet vulnerable heroine who must confront the horrible possibility that she doesn't know her husband as well as she thought. Logan is a seemingly open, honest man who disappears under mysterious circumstances, and those circumstances lead readers in circles throughout the tale. Michael Valente, the business associate with the dark, criminal past, is an enigma and adds a new direction for readers' suspicions to travel. And the mystery stalker who has been sending intimate gifts with cryptic notes to Leigh is yet another suspect in her search to get both her husband and her life back.

The writing is top-notch, the plot is complex and riveting, and readers won't be able to stop themselves from becoming emotionally caught up in the web of lies and love that characterizes Judith McNaught's romantic suspenses.

Reviewed by Kelley Hartshorn
Posted February 25, 2003

When the rich, successful husband of a beautiful New York actress mysteriously disappears, she plunges into a desperate search to find him...and into a menacing web of secrets, deception, and danger. Once again Judith McNaught, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller , crafts a thrilling tale filled with unrelenting suspense, unforgettable characters, and powerful undercurrents of greed, ambition, and desire.

Summary

Leigh Kendall reveled in her stellar Broadway acting career, and her marriage to Logan Manning, scion of an old New York family. When her husband finds an old country cottage, he decides to build their dream house, and to surprise Leigh with her first view of the mountain property. After a Sunday night performance, Leigh heads north to join him, and into a blinding blizzard. Lost and alone, she's run off the road. When she awakes in the local hospital, seriously injured, she asks for her husband. The police arrive to inform her that he has mysteriously disappeared, and Leigh, although obviously distraught, becomes the focus of their suspicions.

The more she discovers about her husband and his business affairs, the less she realizes she knew about Logan Manning and the more terrified she becomes. Now, with no one to help her, she is heading deeper and deeper into unknown territory...where friends and enemies are impossible to distinguish, and where the truth becomes the most terrifying weapon of all.