"An exciting romantic suspense that never slows down"

After several years of marriage, Julie Carlson realizes that her spouse Sid slips out every evening at midnight when he thinks she is fast asleep. Julie figures Sid is cheating and plans to catch him with his lover. She pretends to sleep and when he leaves follow him only to lose him. When her car is stolen, transvestite Mac McQuarry rescues her.

Julie assumes her savior is gay, but is unaware that Mac is an undercover private investigator trying to prove Sid is dirty with mob ties. Sid's friends probably killed his first wife and Mac's brother, and ruined the latter's police career. Mac uses Julie to get at Sid, but soon realizes that the mob wants him and Julie dead.

TO TRUST A STRANGER is an exciting romantic suspense novel that never slows down, as Sid and his pals need Julie and Mac dead. Though a taut thriller, the weakness of the plot lies in the intrepid Julie, who remained oblivious for years as to how cruel her spouse was until she decides to investigate his alleged cheating. Karen Robards has written a terse tale, but some of the key characters are too malicious to care what happens to them.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted November 6, 2001

Karen Robards, who delivered "a racy read" (Cosmopolitan) in her acclaimed besteller Paradise County, once again electrifies the page with hardwired passion and thrilling suspense in this heart-pounding new novel.

Suspicion. It burned through every nerve and Şber of Julie Carlson -- the heartbreaking, infuriating suspicion that her husband was having an affair. To the rest of the world, Sid Carlson was a wealthy contractor with friends in highly inşuential places. But to Julie, he was a man who had cheated on their marriage vow -- and she knew she had to take desperate measures. Who can she trust? Heartbroken by her husband, Julie turns to a handsome stranger.

Mac McQuarry knew better than to mix women and work: the private detective had tracked enough cheating spouses to know unbridled desire usually has no good end. And he had enough trouble of his own: the disgraced former cop had been bumped way down to his current status after an explosive shakedown of the Charleston police department. But when Julie Carlson hires him, Mac can't resist. Not only is she drop-dead gorgeous, but her husband, a longtime enemy, was a player in Mac's inglorious downfall -- and he'd love nothing more than to catch the corrupt jerk with his pants down, so to speak.

But what begins as a run-of-the-mill assignment spiced by a Şery şirtation with beautiful Julie suddenly spirals into a harrowing race for survival. Tracking the Carlsons' car down a lonely road one night, Mac witnesses an incredible hit that targeted Julie -- and suddenly Mac and Julie have become the hunted. With the mob and the police in hot pursuit, they can rely only on each other as they crash their way through a maze of buried secrets and deadly deceptions.