Carnal Curiosity

February 3, 2014
Stone Barrington shows he’s one of the smoothest operators around, despite running into a few rough patches, in Edgar-winner Woods’s entertaining 29th novel featuring the New York City attorney (after Standup Guy). What starts as a business meeting for insurance adjuster Crane Hart ends in Stone’s bedroom, as so often happens with beautiful women in this bestselling series, but the tryst leads to a confrontation with Hart’s estranged husband, Don Dugan, who’s stalling on the divorce settlement. Stone handles the oversized Dugan with his usual panache, but his troubles with the couple are just beginning. When the guests at a ritzy private party are robbed, Stone recognizes one of the crooks as a Dugan henchman. A subsequent robbery gets even more personal, when someone is able to bypass Stone’s state-of-the-art security system in his Manhattan townhouse and steals valuable paintings. Stone needs to draw on all his talents to recover his artwork and lay a trap for highly elusive thieves. Agent: Anne Sibbald, Janklow & Nesbit.

March 15, 2014
New York lawyer Stone Barrington, who's slept his way through 30 fleet, mindless suspensers, comes a cropper with his latest conquest. In fact, you can't really call insurance investigator Crane Hart a conquest, since she comes on so strong during the visit she pays Stone's Turtle Bay home to discuss the $500,000 he lost over his most recent inamorata (Standup Guy, 2014) that they've retired to his boudoir before the visit is over. It's only then that the complications begin. Crane isn't quite divorced after all; her husband, private eye Don Dugan, gets just as fixated on Stone as his wife is, though not in the same way; and despite the best legal help Stone can provide, the estranged couple end up reuniting. Stone would be inconsolable if it weren't for Ann Keaton, personnel director for first lady Katherine Lee's presidential campaign, who obligingly follows the tracks in his bedroom carpet, but not before thieves interrupt a swanky party at Ann's place and relieve most of the high-profile guests of their glitter. Could Dugan be behind the daring robbery? Could he be conspiring with his on-again spouse to worm security information out of well-placed male targets and then put it to larcenous use? Woods can't resist interrupting this tale for brief, irrelevant glimpses into the lives of semiregulars Teddy Fay, the CIA operative who went spectacularly rogue before he got a secret presidential pardon, and Holly Barker, the CIA assistant director who orders all records of him expunged from the nation's intelligence database, and for occasional reports on the fortunes of Katherine Lee's campaign. Zero mystery, zero ingenuity, very little suspense. But Woods mostly keeps his eye on the ball, which elevates this installment well above the run of his recent work.

COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

March 15, 2014
That a beautiful woman spells trouble for Stone Barrington should be no surprise for Woods' longtime fans. Crane Hart is a seductive insurance adjuster who jumps into bed with Stone soon after meeting with him about an insurance claim. Her giant of an estranged husband targets Stone after seeing them together, but no sooner has Stone helped Crane secure a divorce then she's back in her ex's arms. It's no skin off Stone's back. He already has another paramour lined up: a pretty staffer for Kate Lee, the First Lady-cum-CIA director, who has just announced her candidacy for president. But Stone discovers that Crane and her ex, Don Dugan, are up to no good when they orchestrate the armed robbery of a group of one-percenters at a party Stone is attending. When Stone realizes that their next target is a prominent jewelry show, he and his NYPD sidekick, Dino, have to work overtime to outwit Dugan and his circle. Familiar but entertaining fare.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)