"Fast, funny and exciting!"

Karen Robards is a master of the quick, funny exciting read. Her backlist includes classics like WALKING AFTER MIDNIGHT and NIGHT MAGIC and fans of these two should love TO TRUST A STRANGER. Robards' deft touch with action and humor is well displayed here.

The opening prologue is extremely intense and Robards never slows the pace. Julie Carlson is a well drawn heroine, a beauty queen with depth to her and an evil slimeball for a husband. Julie suspects Sid is cheating on her and when she decides to follow him, she ends up being rescued from a carjacking by a drag queen named Debbie.

Debbie turns out to be Mac MacQuarry, a detective on a stakeout in a gay bar. When Julie sees Mac walking a small poodle on a pink leash, she is sure that he is gay and feels very safe with him--so he doesn't enlighten her. Mac has his own motives for helping Julie. He is sure Sid had something to do with Mac's brother's disappearance and Mac's own firing from the police department and he hopes Julie will help him prove it.

Mac is all one could want in a romantic action hero:tough, tender, funny, intelligent and gorgeous! The fact he is living with his grandmother's poodle Josephine, who periodically goes nuts, is testament to his underlying sweet nature. Josephine is just a delight and her presence adds some nice twists to the story.

Mac and Julie fall in love as they dodge mobsters intent on killing them and the action is non-stop with a dynamite climax that will leave you breathless. Fans of romantic suspense with a twist of humor ala Linda Howard's MR PERFECT or many of Jayne Ann Krentz's contemporaries (PERFECT PARTNERS comes to mind) should really enjoy TO TRUST A STRANGER.

Reviewed by Linda Hurst
Posted January 28, 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.