Best Intentions

March 9, 2009
Financial troubles and more test the marriage of a downtown Manhattan career mom and her business journalist husband in this writerly page-turner from Listfield (Waiting to Surface
). Sam and Lisa Barkley, who were college sweethearts, can just afford to send their two daughters to an Upper East Side private girls' school, though Lisa, whose family “struggled into the middle class,” wonders if a public school “gifted” program would've been a better choice. Meanwhile, Sam's late-night phone calls and odd absences from his office lead her to accuse him of having an affair. Lisa confides her fears to her best friend from college, Deirdre Cushing, whose mysterious death heightens the tension and mistrust between Lisa and Sam. While the author's penchant for punch lines and cliffhangers can come across as a stylistic tic, deft pacing keeps the action moving and the reader guessing. Listfield ensures no character is above suspicion, and in the end, no one is without blame.

April 15, 2009
Listfield (Waiting to Surface, 2007, etc.) combines domestic melodrama with murder mystery in this tale of a Manhattan couple whose secrets almost cause their downfall.

PR executive Lisa and financial journalist Sam have been happily married since college. Narrating their story, Lisa is at pains to describe the family as virtuous Upper East Siders: Although she sends her two daughters to a private school for a superior education, she is uncomfortable with the snobbish Upper East Side mothers. Life starts to unravel when she hears a suspicious message on Sam's cell phone and overhears a more suspicious conversation. She begins to suspect that Sam, who claims he is working on a big story to cement his shaky career, might be having an affair. Her own job security becomes uncertain when her boss sells to a large out-of-town firm that brings in a consultant who appears determined to undermine Lisa's authority. Lisa confides all to Deirdre, a boutique owner who's been her best friend since college. Then Lisa, Sam and Deirdre have dinner with Deirdre's old flame Jack, now a lawyer in Boston, who's in town to interview at a Manhattan firm. Romantic sparks fly between the former lovers, and Jack, claiming his marriage has failed, enlists Lisa's help to renew his relationship with Deirdre, who is currently confused about her long affair with an untrustworthy, globetrotting photographer. Listfield does a nice job showing delicate marital tensions between Sam and Lisa, and she also creates a compelling, vaguely mysterious counterpoint character in Deirdre. But Deirdre's murder sucks all the energy and believability out of the novel. It's obvious who's guilty, so Lisa's semi-sleuthing makes her seem at best dense, at worst self-absorbed and meddlesome. The too-neatly wrapped-up ending, in which Sam's journalistic coup reaps him a book deal for big bucks, may be the least believable aspect of all.

Lively insights give way to predictable made-for-TV-movie fare.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

March 1, 2009
Seeds of doubt find fertile soil in Listfields latest mordant examination of marital discord and betrayal among a group of longtime friends whose careers and relationships degenerate in a downward spiral as theynavigate the fractious minefields of upwardly mobile Manhattan. As Lisa Barkleys best friend, Deirdre, anguishes over her commitment-phobic boyfriend, Ben, while simultaneously pursuing her college sweetheart, Jack, Lisa agonizes over the shakiness of her tenure at a powerful PR firm and lack of stability in her marriage to Sam. As an investigative journalist hot on the trail of a scathing Wall Street expos', Sams close-to-the-vest reticence may have less to do with protecting his sources than protecting the identity of the woman Lisa suspects him of having an affair with. When Deirdre is found murdered, suspicion naturally falls on Ben and Jack, until it transpires that neither Lisa nor Sam have a plausible alibi. Although the suspense is slow to build, Listfield maintains a taut dramatic tension throughout this stern portrait of contemporary morality.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)