"Sizzling and Frightening"

Julie Carlson thought she had it all. She won a coveted beauty contest then married the man of her dreams. But something has gone terribly wrong. After eight years of marriage, her husband, Sid, was no longer interested in her and left the house several nights a week to who knows where. Determined to find out, Julie follows him to a very seamy part of town. When her car is stolen, she is left on the street with nothing on but her frilly nightie. When a very tall drag queen helps her out, she is very thankful for her new friend, Debbie. How was she to know that Debbie is really a private investigator named Mac out on a job?

Julie sees that Mac is a handsome fellow without his wig and lipstick. He offers to help her by finding out where her husband is going on his nights out. She doesn't realize that Mac has a hidden agenda. His brother disappeared several years before and he thinks that Sid has something to do with it. When he rescues Julie from a murderer in her home, he is really in a quandary about what is happening and why.

TO TRUST A STRANGER started out with a bang and kept going from there. It has some very funny portions as well as a sizzling romance. I, for one, could not put it down. All of the characters were well drawn and I loved the hero and the heroine. There was a lot of sexual tension as well as a frightening murderer. There is nothing boring about this book. It starts out very scary and ends the same way with lots of chills and thrills. Karen Robards has written some wonderful books and this is one of her best.

Reviewed by Marilyn Heyman
Posted January 7, 2002

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.