The Choice

July 4, 2011
Everything flows so smoothly in Woods's 21st Stone Barrington novel (after Bel-Air Dead) that one knows disaster can't be too far behind for the New York lawyer now a full partner in Woodman & Weld, among his other duties. Arrington Calder, Stone's lover and the mother of Peter, the son Stone unknowingly fathered 15 years before, wants father and son to get to know one another. Stone and Peter, who has plans for a film director career that includes Yale Drama School, form an easy relationship. While Arrington sees to the completion of her Virginia mansion, Stone begins using his connections to ease Peter's path, though the precocious teenager doesn't need much help. Kelli Keane, New York Post reporter, is one fly in the ointment as she probes the relationship of Stone and Arrington. Series fans may enjoy the flagrant uses of wealth, prestige, and influence, but Woods provides little of the mystery or suspense he's delivered so well in the past.

August 1, 2011

New York super-lawyer Stone Barrington's teenaged son comes to live with him. Wait, there's less, much less.

Naturally, the kid is a genius: handsome, charming, courteous, already at 15 a precocious filmmaker who graduated from high school early because they'd run out of things to teach him. How could he miss, with parents like Stone (Bel-Air Dead, 2011, etc.) and Arrington Calder, the movie actress Stone impregnated shortly before she was swept off her feet and to the nuptial bed by legendary star Vance Calder? Swiftly recovering from his initial jitters about parenthood, Stone buys Peter new clothes, lays some fatherly advice on him and takes him to a board meeting of Centurion Studios, where Peter passes a rough cut of his amateur movie on to CEO Leo Goldman Jr., who's eager to buy it outright. With a little help from his friends, Stone helps Peter change his name to Barrington, backdates his birth certificate two years, helps him get into exclusive Knickerbocker Hall and greases the path to the Yale Drama School. While he's at it, he proposes marriage to Arrington, who's traveled to New York to help Peter get settled, warm Stone's bed and incidentally escape from Prof. Timothy Rutledge, the jealous architect who designed her house in Virginia and warmed her own bed. So many scenes pass without casting a shadow over the new family's happiness, as in a Care Bears story, that you just know something bad must be looming, and finally, in Chapter 50, it arrives. Fortunately, the characters pull themselves together manfully with the help of some philosophical reflections, a convenient .45 and a fresh infusion of cash.

Further proof, if the series needed it, that there's no lifecycle trauma that won't yield to the power of money, contacts and bling.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

April 1, 2011

Yup, looks as if Stone Barrington had a son--according to rich-rich former love Arrington Calder. She's got other plans for him, too. Don't know yet where the suspense comes in--though those plans are probably dangerous--but Woods is always popular.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2011
In Bel-Air Dead (2011), readers learned that perennial bachelor and man-about-town Stone Barrington fathered a child years before with on-again, off-again lover Arrington Calder. Now we meet Peter, a preternaturally smart and savvy 16-year-old who takes to Stone immediately and adapts to his father's life in New York City with aplomb. Stone couldn't be happier. Peter takes his last name and decides he wants to become a director, and Arrington and Stone decide to finally tie the knot. Most of the book focuses on Stone setting Peter up in an elite private school and Peter's application to Yale, which doesn't make for the most scintillating reading. The pace picks up toward the end, though, when Arrington's menacing former suitor decides to exact revenge on the happy couple. Readers who have followed the series for a while will be eager to meet Stone's son, even if he is absurdly perfect. Would anyone expect otherwise of Stone Barrington's progeny? HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Woods' vast and loyal audience will be thrilled with a second-generation Barrington charmer.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)